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F-Secure Report: Another SCADA Attack in Iran — This Time With AC/DC
An anonymous reader writes "F-Secure antivirus company of Finland has reported receiving e-mails from an Iranian nuclear scientist, who says Persian uranium-235 isotope refining efforts have just been hit with yet another cyber strike. (Stuxnet, Duqu and Flamer-Skywiper being the previous iterations of the same Operation Project Olympic attack plan.) Last month, President Obama's staff has admitted to the New York Times that there is a joint Israel-U.S. cybermilitary operation was behind the mishaps Iranians have recently been suffering with their UF6 gas refining centrifuge systems in the Natanz and Fordo plants. This time, the unverified e-mail claims, a new Metasploit-based malware owns Iranian VPNs, causes fault in the nuclear plants' Siemens-based industrial control systems, and randomly starts to play AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck' aloud via the infected computers' speakers."
I have a few bones to pick with the summary, of a factual nature. Corrections are in bold, I have not corrected the grammatical errors.
"F-Secure antivirus company of Finland has reported receiving e-mails from an Iranian nuclear scientist, who says Persian uranium-235 isotope refining efforts have just been hit with yet another cyber strike. (Stuxnet, Duqu and Flamer-Skywiper allegedly being the previous iterations of the same Operation Project Olympic attack plan.) Last month, an anonymous member of President Obama's staff has allegedly admitted to the New York Times that there is a joint Israel-U.S. cybermilitary operation was behind the mishaps Iranians have recently been suffering with their UF6 gas refining centrifuge systems in the Natanz and Fordo plants. This time, the unverified e-mail claims, a new Metasploit-based malware owns iranian VPNs, causes fault in the nuclear plants' Siemens-based industrial control systems, and randomly starts to play AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck' aloud via the infected computers' speakers."
I'm not saying the Times is wrong, but I don't trust their source completely. I also am not claiming he's wrong, but the press has a very bad habit of really fucking up critical details of technology-related stories. For example, I find it pretty hard to swallow that such an operation would only involve the US and Israel. It's all very convenient, and tidy, and in real life the real story is very rarely wrapped up in such a pretty little package. We certainly need at least an independent confirmation of the source's information.
It's been opened.
The US will not encounter foreign boots on the ground but cyber retaliation... and I promise it could get very ugly. As a former Network Admin, Accelerator Designer, and now Siemens Programmer I can tell you that these viruses can be turned back on us. Much of the world runs on Siemens programming. Oil rigs, chemical mixers, MRI scanners, food prep, power grids, water treatment, and manufacturing assembly of all kinds (right off the top of my head) all run on Siemens hardware/software and we don't have the ability to defend against it.
However, I am not worried about Iran. It's China who already has their digital boots on the ground.