Iran Admits Stuxnet Affected Their Nuclear Program 211
plover writes "According to this article in the Guardian, 'Ahmadinejad admitted the [Stuxnet] worm had affected Iran's uranium enrichment. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," the president said. "They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that, and today they are not able [to do that] anymore."'"
Re:Is Stuxnet a first? (Score:1, Informative)
- is this this the first time a successful virus has been created to attack a specific target?
Some would say AIDS, but many would argue.
Re:Is Stuxnet a first? (Score:5, Informative)
1. No, it's not the first. The 2010 Verizon Data Breach Report [verizonbusiness.com] shows that 54% of successful attacks using malware used customized or custom-written malware, and that 97% of the data records stolen were done so with the use of custom malware.
2. Yes, we're going to see a lot of it. It's already begun [langner.com], according the the engineer who dissected the industrial control code that stuxnet injected.
Re:Iran's plan (Score:3, Informative)
Do well-informed people make up bullshit statistics?
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html [johnstonsarchive.net]
Re:Iran's plan (Score:2, Informative)
And WTF is wrong with you? I suggest you take a class in reading and comprehension, then you will realize that I was using a figure of speech. A caged animal is a common metaphor for someone that is living under tyranny or enslavement. And yes, as per your other comment, the animal side of humans comes out very quickly when they cannot even fulfill basic needs like food and shelter. People can become quite savage in the right conditions. Now go back to your cave troll.
Re:Iran's plan (Score:5, Informative)
Their PM accidentally admitted [guardian.co.uk], back in 2006, that they did have nuclear weapons.
Re:One thing has changed (Score:3, Informative)
It's quite absurd for you to call Iran dangerous; they haven't been at war for years.
You're joking right?
Longstanding Support for Terrorism [washingtoninstitute.org]
Iran also keeps threatening to cut off the world's oil supply by closing the Straight of Hormuz [foxnews.com].
Of course they are concerned that the US may invade since Iran has wealth to extract and won't play along with the US, so they're developing nuclear weapons.
That's a laugh. The US gets the oil it needs from other countries [doe.gov] while Japan, China, and other US allies and friends buy Iran's oil. That also doesn't take into account the large oil reserves that the US has that are undeveloped.
No, the Iranian's have a very different outlook.
Ahmadinejad: Destroy Israel, End Crisis [washingtonpost.com]
Iran's missiles are ‘ready to destroy Israel’ [timesonline.co.uk]
Iran says can cut energy to Europe, hit enemies [khaleejtimes.com]
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
Just disconnect any sensitive nuclear facility from the freaking Internet. Are they so stupid?
No, they're not stupid. Of course the nuclear plant's control network is isolated from other networks. You just don't understand how this worm works.
Using one of four different previously unknown (0-day) Windows exploits, it finds its way onto new machines. Two of the exploits are network attacks (one print spooler, one RPC.) One of the exploits strikes using a bug in how Windows reads the AUTORUN.INF file, and will install the virus whenever infected removable media is inserted, such as USB sticks or CD-ROM discs. Stuxnet is written to all removable media on an infected machine. AUTORUN can be disabled, but the bug is such that it doesn't matter -- simply inserting the infected media spreads the infection.
It's stealthy, and hides itself using Windows rootkit methodology. It looks for specific 32-bit Windows operating systems and which antivirus software packages are installed, and will either fail to install if the antivirus can't be worked around, or it uses different exploits to elevate privileges depending on the security environment of the machine.
It contacts a set of command and control servers (that were taken offline) to download updates to the virus. The virus-infected machines periodically check in to those servers to see if there's new payload or software, update themselves, then spread it around to the other infected machines.
Once it finds its way onto a machine running "Step 7", a programming environment for programming Siemens industrial control systems, it modifies the code that is compiled for the control system. It uses another kind of hiding technology that acts like a rootkit here, telling the engineer that the deployed code is OK.
The engineers do their work on an infected machine connected to the regular networks. They then have to transfer their newly compiled control program data onto the isolated control network. They typically do so using USB sticks or CD-ROMs, which then infect the machine that is transmitting the code to the industrial control network.
The modifications to the data sent to the control network are subtle. Stuxnet has two payloads. The first tries to figure out that it's in an environment that matches the target by comparing frequency controller IDs with those of specific Iranian-made controllers, looks for an array of more than 32 of them, and then watches to see if they run at high speeds for a couple weeks. If so, it'll switch to a damage cycle where it over-revs the centrifuge motors, then suddenly slows them, then suddenly speeds them up again. It repeats this hour-long cycle once every 27 days or so. Even if the over-revving doesn't damage the centrifuges, the sudden slowdowns and speed-ups mixes the uranium up again, rendering the purity of the uranium inexplicably unrefined.
The other payload appears to be intended to cause more damage. It's believed to be designed to attack the control systems at the Buhesher nuclear reactor, opening and closing steam valves in order to over-stress the turbine, with the intent of destroying the 150 foot long shaft and its enclosure. It also pretends to be the reactor's environmental sensors, and reports false data back to the controller; all of this faked data makes the turbine look like everything's operating normally, but in reality a hellstorm is going on inside the turbine enclosure.
It's quite a sophisticated worm.
Re:One thing has changed (Score:1, Informative)
Russia will freak out if Turkey gets nukes.
We have been lending Turkey nuclear bombs for a while now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
Re:Iran's plan (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not a huge supporter of Israel at all, but I sure understand why they do what they do. It's like you fighting with someone, if he:
1) Doesn't promise to not kill you.
2) He keeps hitting you and trying to kill you whenever you let him go (even if he promises not to).
It's pretty understandable if you put a choke-hold on him and not let go. Also no surprise they stop getting hit as much as long as they have that chokehold.
Not pleasant to watch, but from what I see many of the Palestinians and their supporters share a HUGE part of the blame for their situation.
Israel seems to get on reasonably with Egypt and Jordan, after both agreed to make peace with Israel. But the rest of the Arab/muslim nations including the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel and they want to ELIMINATE Israel completely.
So why should anyone be surprised when Israel does not want to loosen their chokehold on the Palestinians?
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict#Camp_David_Summit_.282000.29 [wikipedia.org]
In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a peace summit between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak reportedly offered the Palestinian leader approximately 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem,[13] and that 69 Jewish settlements (which comprise 85% of the West Bank's Jewish settlers) would be ceded to Israel. He also proposed "temporary Israeli control" indefinitely over another 10% of the West Bank territory--an area including many more Jewish settlements. According to Palestinian sources, the remaining area would be under Palestinian control, yet certain areas would be broken up by Israeli bypass roads and checkpoints. Depending on how the security roads would be configured, these Israeli roads might impede free travel by Palestinians throughout their proposed nation and reduce the ability to absorb Palestinian refugees.
Arafat rejected this offer. President Clinton reportedly requested that Arafat make a counter-offer, but he proposed none. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami who kept a diary of the negotiations said in an interview in 2001, when asked whether the Palestinians made a counterproposal: "No. And that is the heart of the matter. Never, in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians, was there a Palestinian counterproposal."
They rejected that offer. Why don't they make a counterproposal? The Palestinians don't really want to make peace with Israel. To them peace = Israel wiped out.
Hamas (and Fatah) certainly don't want peace with Israel, as long as they follow their own charter, any peace they make with Israel can only be temporary: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp [yale.edu] http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic/?c=1598&a=97061 [alzaytouna.net]
Just go see what they want.
Yes it's pretty nasty what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, slowly strangling someone is nasty. But what should they do? The Palestinians themselves don't really want to make peace with Israel and as long as fighting or opposing Jews ( just because they are Jews) is _considered_ part of Islam by significant numbers of them (google it), go figure how long that peace will last.
As for getting rid of Israel totally:
From a secular objective perspective being a citizen of Israel would be better than being a citizen of "Greater Palestine" ruled by Hamas or Fatah (assuming Israel is gone). Just look at how the various muslim nations rule themselves. They kill and abuse their own people rather often (Shiites vs Sunnis, tribe vs tribe etc). Please list down the muslim countries that are doing better than Israel, by modern standards. Remember many of them have oil, Israel doesn
Re:One thing has changed (Score:3, Informative)
* Turkey is one of five European nations that continue to house U.S. tactical nuclear weapons allocated for NATO.
* The weapons, however, are no longer integral to the NATO military mission. In fact, their readiness posture is such that it would take months to prepare them for battle.
* Nonetheless, it will be difficult to remove them from Turkey given Ankara's concerns about the Iranian nuclear program and its somewhat strained relationship with the United States.
And they'd be hard to remove from Turkey precisely because of Iran's nuclear weapons program.