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Stuxnet Virus Attack: Russia Warns of ‘Iranian Chernobyl'
Russian nuclear officials have warned of another Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster at Iran's controversial Bushehr reactor because of the damage caused by the Stuxnet virus, according to the latest Western intelligence reports.
But they have raised serious concerns about the extensive damage caused to the plant's computer systems by the mysterious Stuxnet virus, which was discovered last year and is widely believed to have been the result of a sophisticated joint US-Israeli cyber attack.
According to Western intelligence reports, Russian scientists warned the Kremlin that they could be facing "another Chernobyl" if they were forced to comply with Iran's tight deadline to activate the complex this summer.
After decades of delays over the plant, which was first commissioned by the Shah in the 1970s, Iran's leaders are demanding that scientists stick to the schedule set last year. They argue that any delay would be a blow to Iran's international prestige.
Bushehr is due to produce its first electricity for Iran's national grid this summer after Russian technicians started loading the first nuclear rods into the reactor last October.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's foreign minister who also serves as head of the country's Atomic Energy Organisation, rejected suggestions earlier this month that the Bushehr opening schedule should be postponed. "All the rumours related to the Westerners' claims that Stuxnet had caused damage to the nuclear plants are rejected," he said.
However, Russian scientists working at the plant have become so concerned by Iran's apparent disregard for nuclear safety issues that they have lobbied the Kremlin directly to postpone activation until at least the end of the year, so that a proper assessment can be made of the damage caused to its computer operations by Stuxnet.
The Iranian government is bitterly opposed to any further delay, which it would regard as another blow to national pride on a project that is more than a decade behind schedule. While Western intelligence officials believe Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, Iran insists the project's goals are peaceful.
The Russian scientists' report to the Kremlin, a copy of which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, concludes that, despite "performing simple, basic tests" on the Bushehr reactor, the Russian team "cannot guarantee safe activation of the reactor".
It also accuses the Iranian management team, which is under intense political pressure to stick to the deadline, of "not exhibiting the professional and moral responsibility" that is normally required. They accuse the Iranians of having "disregard for human life" and warn that Russia could find itself blamed for "another Chernobyl" if it allows Bushehr to go ahead.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the Stuxnet virus had been developed as a joint project by US and Israeli intelligence officials at Israel's top-secret Dimona project in the Negev desert.
The virus was developed at Dimona over a period of two years before it was planted into Iran's nuclear programme, an operation now widely regarded as the world's most successful cyber attack.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, recently declared that the Stuxnet virus had set Iran's nuclear programme back by several years.
50 Comments so far
Show All"According to Western intelligence reports, Russian scientists warned the Kremlin that they could be facing "another Chernobyl"".
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"Western intelligence reports" = politically-motivated lies, manipulation. The average duck knows that.
why don't you cry about how the nazis committed genocide against the jews?
Why is it that when I read your screen name and then see that your comment refuses to address the issue seriously, that I suspect you reflexively attack any story that could possibly cast the State of Israel in an unfavourable light?
It might not actually fit in your case, but it the norm on the internet, so please excuse my assumptions if they are wrong.
Did you attend SUNY Binghamton by any chance?
There is no chance that I did. I do recall attending the UoW, though. Mind you, that's not in the U.S.
Not in the U.S.
Wish I wasn't.
Not that Western powers would conceivably be worried about the poisoning of an innocent population through toxic chemicals or radiation caused by their intervention.
Gaza - white phosphorus
Iraq - depleted uranium
"Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, recently declared that the Stuxnet virus had set Iran's nuclear programme back by several years."
Oh, right, let us not also forget the fact that Iran as a signatory to the NPT has a right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful means so this entire action is yet another violation of established international law.
Funny, how that's not mentioned.
Oh well, I guess I should just sit back and be amazed at what the US/Israeli MIC can accomplish nowadays.
Awesome virus, bro!!! Super cool!!!!
Just think of what the minds behind developing such a weapon could have done towards furthering peace, huh?
There will soon come a time when all will have to answer to the inhumanity we have shown to one another. Unfortunately, I feel our country will suffer more than any other and before any other because of our crimes against the world by our hands. The US is a shell of a country long ago having abandoned it's ideals, if it ever truly held the ideals in the first place. We no more care about the damage that we may be responsible for than we did the institution of slavery or the internment of the japanese in this country during WW2. It's all based on a lie and it's fruit will soon come to bear. It will not be subtle nor will it be unjust. Israel will also suffer for it's both provocative and holier than though stance toward the rest of it's neighbors. I hope to see it all in living color!
The use of the Stuxnet virus could very well be the cyber equivalent of the German use of chlorine gas on April 22, 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres. A truly scary proposition.
Dear NateW:
It is so sad that governments of the world treat the world as if it were just a series of soccer or football game points; as if humans and the planet did not matter. One Chernobyl was enogh, one Hiroshima and ( just to really make our point, as if it wasn't made already) one Nagasaki was enough. One "shock and awe' was enough too.
What hapoens in one part of the planet, happens to us all. I wonder why no one in any government seems to remember that?
Good thing there are no computer programmers in Iran, eh?
How many innocent people must we murder in order to achieve peace? It's a good thing our time on Earth is merely a stepping stone to a pie in the sky eternity where everyone will hang out with god, drive SUVs, eat BBQ, and carry automatic weapons openly. I can't wait!
If our end state after death is eternal life how do we avoid crushing boredom? It seems to me that 'eternal life' would be its own kind of hell. Man, I sincerely hope that when the lights go out, the lights REALLY go out. Eternal life after death? I pray to God that this does not exist.
Alas, the answer is still blowing in the wind. The notion of "peace" to the oppressor is always that of the grave.
Stuxnet is a brilliant piece of code. Definitely beyond your part-time hacker. Indeed, it had to be state-sponsored.
Most news reports are not covering the details, or the fallout which will take years to identify.
- Siemens, who collaborated with the US/Israel, lost 10% of their share values when news of the success of Stuxnet started filtering out. It is not yet clear if Siemens was aware of the goal of this collaboration. If Siemens were not aware, I expect US-German relations to sour even more.
- Buyers of industrial control systems like SCADA will now be extremely wary. The likelihood of cyber-terrorism or industrial espionage is now on every SCADA buyers avoidance list.
- The cost of SCADA systems will now go through the roof as manufacturers will have to prove/demonstrate that their firmware is resistant to malware attack. There will be a trickle-down affect.
- That the Iranians did such an excellent job in mitigating the damage is a credit to some very astute system administrators, something that may have surprised US intelligence agencies. Note that it took Microsoft 4 full days to figure out what Stuxnet was doing.
This is a shot that has been heard around the world.
"Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the Stuxnet virus had been developed as a joint project by US and Israeli intelligence officials at Israel's top-secret Dimona project in the Negev desert."
The NYT is reporting on a top-secret project. How does this differ from the Wikeleaks reporting? (Other than Wikileaks released only secret, not top-secret info.) Will a Grand Jury investigation be convened to establish charges against the NYT? Hmm...
Exactly! So lets be clear the US and Israel have already attacked Iran. Iran is one of the signatories of the Non Profileration Treaty, while Israel is not. Iran is not looking to go nuclear, they want nuclear power for electric and medicine. So leave it to the zionists in control of DC and the zionists in Israel to try and confuse those who do no research to just believe what they read. Dimona has been in existence for decades, we know that. The US is prohibited by law to give aid and support to any country who attempts to develop or create nuclear weapons. So why does the US continue to deliver billions (l trillion since 1948) to a country they KNOW has nuclear weapons??? If this "Worm" created by Israel does in fact blow up a facility in Iran, that is pure genocide. So, yes lets see the NYTimes who refuses to print any of the Wiki Leaks documents re: Israel and the US and their unholy alliance. The NYtimes along with WAPO have never published anything derogatory against the apartheid zionist brutal state of Israel. Yes, the zionists are at this moment gassing Palestinans with a nerve gas they got from the US! White Phospherous which burns to the bone was used against Gaza 2 years ago. Where is the UN on that one? Everytime an issue against Israel comes up at the UN, the US is the only country who stands with Irael against all other nations. Is that democracy? Why didnt the US congress adopt the Goldstone report which outlines in detail the genocidal maniacs which Israel has become under zionism. Because the US government is filled with zionists top to bottom.
This story is pieced together so that it will appear that the Iranians are
evildoers and a threat to world peace (and so forth). It does not condemn
the US and Israel for attacks on Iran's right to have a nuclear enrichment
program. They do. They also have a right to their own self-defense and
it is more than clear that they have been consistently subject to Israel
and the US provocation and attacks. Would the US and Israel jumpo for joy
if Iran performed similar attacks on Israeli nuclear sites? Shouldn't Israel
be subject to dismantling its "fortress Israel" under random supervision
of the IAEA (UN) as proposed by many non-aligned nations at the UN? The
US (and Israel) do not even want to talk about it.
"Buyers of industrial control systems like SCADA will now be extremely wary. The likelihood of cyber-terrorism or industrial espionage is now on every SCADA buyers avoidance list."
This sounds like one more extremely compelling argument in favor of open source software. I am not joking. It is exactly the sort of closed, proprietary software like the potential horror discussed in this article that may seal the fate of future computer systems.
It will be nice to think that Iranian scientists and nuclear engineers will be able to get help instantly from probably thousands of open source techies at all hours of the day, 365 days a year. This sort of open and cooperative support may be just one thing that could prevent a major human and environmental disaster.
This is a temporary speed-bump for Iran's nuclear program. The Arak heavy-water reactor (see picture above) can still create enough PU to build 2 weapons/year.
Nuclear technology is science, not a secret that only magicians know. Iranian scientists are scientists just like any other.
Paying spies for scientific information saves time and money but it doesn't mean the technology cannot be learned by other scientists.
Look at how much Jonathan Pollard's spying saved the Russians from having to spend their own rubles:
"But by far the most egregious damage done by Pollard was to steal classified documents relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR and send them to Israel. According to sources in the US State Department, Israel then turned around and traded those stolen nuclear secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas from the USSR to Israel. Other information that found its way from the US to Israel to the USSR resulted in the loss of American agents operating inside the USSR. Casper Weinberger, in his affidavit opposing a reduced sentence for Pollard, described the damage done to the United States thus, "[It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by... Pollard's treasonous behavior."
This should end the suggestion that Israel’s spies are harmless. They are not. The United States’ nuclear deterrent cost an estimated five trillion taxpayer dollars during the 50s and 60s to build and maintain, and less than $100,000 for Pollard to undermine. Israel waited 13 years to admit Pollard had been spying for them, and now lobbies for his release, having granted him Israeli citizenship."
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/motherofallscandals.php
(Of Course Israel sold other secret US military information to the Soviets as well. Pollard can't be given all the credit.)
Israel is spying on american citizens every day. Every home based telephone goes through Israel. They spy on every aspect of american life and business. They steal our resources, use our banks as personal ATMS. Why wasnt Dov Zakheim the Pentagon's Treasurer brought to justice? On Sept. 10, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld stated on national TV that 3trillion was missing from the Pentagon. Dov had left town headed straight to Israel. The next day the Pentagon hit with a missle and destroyed the "document section" of the Pentagon. Nothing about this on national corporate media, nothing about this from our government. While the Congress is about to go after social security, and our citizens safety net....they have done nothing about the absolute looting of our Treasury by the Pentagon, no bid contractors, and other corporate corrupters. Those who dont believe 911 was not an inside job, should look at the preponderance of evidence gathered by SCIENTISTS and architects from around the world. Something stinks and it Israel and its relationship to the empire of the US.
"On Sept. 10, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld stated on national TV that 3trillion was missing from the Pentagon."
With you all the way on your whole comment but for one small nitpick. It was $2.3 trillion, not that it makes much difference, becaude I doubt that most of us can really conceive of such a large figure and what it really means.
For 2.3 trillion dollars we could purchase 10 million $230,000 houses. Or, we could finance one-payer medical insurance for the whole country for many decades. Or, we could destroy a couple countries that have never been, are not now, and never would have been any threat whatsoever to this country.
In the youtube video below Rumsfeld states the 2.3 figure along with the statistic that the Pentagon can not generally account for 25% of the funds it spends. To me that means we need to cut the Pentagon budget by AT LEAST 25%.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kpWqdPMjmo
Isn't it considered illegal to develop a virus and use it to infect computers?
Looks like it is only wrong if the wrong people are doing it.
If Johnathan Pollard gave our nuclear screts to Israel and then Israel sold the secrets to Russia, it is considered Treason.
When China could not lift a missile into space, it was Slick Willie who gave them the secret. Isn't that treason? Willie probably called it Globalization.
"It is more likely that they found some present or past employee of Siemen's highly familar with the system software right down to core PLC level and offered them an enormous amount of money, a new identity and mansion in the Caribbean etc., etc."
And then had the poor dumb bastard assassinated.
Arrogant, hubristic folks numb the mind and lay waste to everything which surrounds them never realizing they dig their own graves.
.
This Stuxnet Virus Attack, developed jointly by the United States and Israel is CYBER WARFARE ,,,,,,, If the Iranian Bushehr Nuclear Reactor becomes another "CHERNOBY DISASTER; then one half of the world will decend on Israel and destroy every inch of that nation and kill every Israeli man, woman and child.
There will be no stopping the vengence,,,that's for openers.
All of the modern industrial civilization, as we know it, today will be destroyed.
Israel has started the doomday countdown.
//
And they won't decend on the U.S.? Why the hell not???? Well we do have those pesky oceans from sea to shining sea!
They will and we have history as proof: from 1492 to 9/11.
If Iran hacked into US Nuclear Reactors and introduced a Virus that could lead to a Chernobyl type incident, it would be called an act of "terrorism".
This IS Terrorism and Israel is bragging about it.
Right.
It probably has more to with the small number of Israeli insiders leaking information to Wikileaks, and what happens to them if they are caught, than it does with anything Wikileaks does with the information once they get it.
what is fascinating about this is not that the US or Israelis would risk thousands or millions of Iranian lives to monkeywrench a power plant, but that anyone would be building a nuclear plant attached to the international information grid.
I don't mean to imply that this is unique, by any means. I suspect that by now all or almost all such plants are.
But while I am tempted to say that this is just colossally stupid, I have to surmise that there are other factors involved. The Iranian government has to realise that the Americans are looking to disrupt any kind of Iranian sovereignty in as cheap a way as possible. It has to realise also that the Americans generally start an invasion by taking out utilities and communications to disable response and to terrorize the civilian population.
But they have the Russians building, because the Russians are willing to do so, and need not be too fearful of in intimidation. The Russians will build there by a method developed under the old Soviet government, which could defend itself by threatening reprisal, with relatively little need to decentralize its operations.
As a plan for electricity, it makes no sense, even though that is apparently what is actually going on, at least according to all or most of the assembled intelligence of the Western powers. Presumably the centralized power within Iran is at least as worried about its internal dissidents as it is about external disruptions, and perhaps rightly so in some sense.
So as a result, Iran works towards a terribly inefficient plan in terms of providing electricity for Iranians and also a centralized plant that offers a target to the American and/or Israeli aggressors. But then, it shall be under attack one way or another, and the possibility that it is indeed creating a nuclear weapon regardless of whether it is, apparently provides some deterrent.
One of the few things that causes a more tangled web than deceit, I suppose, is violence.
What better way to accomplish that goal than by covertly creating a virus is that in a way that simulates mechanical failure while overtly supporting the Iranian government by opposing sanctions pushed by the U.S. It’s both simple and elegant.
While the Allies were developing nuclear weapons, Russia was provided with the information by an insider to make them as well. This has been the same for all weapons such as clubs, bows, guns, planes and bombs.
Now that the virus has been developed as a weapon, we can expect someone out there, for whatever reason, to crack it, alter it, and use it against the countries that developed it to cause a melt down.
Without nuclear power stations, New Zealand is looking better and better as a place to live.
On August 13, 2010, the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) announced that the first reactor at the Bushehr NPP would be loaded with nuclear fuel on August 21, 2010 and would henceforth make the Bushehr facility qualified as an operational nuclear power plant. The process for transferring the fuel to the pool located near the heart of reactor was estimated to take seven to eight days.
Bushehr plant is geographically located on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf and an environmental leak (high probability given Bushehr's age and its ramshackle infrastructure) will impact the international waterways of the Gulf where over 40% of world crude production passes through on a daily basis.
Although the IAEA has not independently verified this development,Stuxnet virus attack on Iran's nuclear facilities computerized Industrial control systems is now pretty much confirmed by all other agencies worldwide.
Stuxnet is believed to infect "Motor Control Software" which in reality means that it actually tampers with calibration and processing of Motor speeds where these motors are employed in Uranium enrichment centrifuge systems.
This in turn means that Uranium enrichment processes will not yield enriched Uranium.
It is therefore unlikely that there will be a catastrophic impact on the environment as a direct result of Suxnet infection.
This being said, one should not dismiss a possibility that the Islamic regime of Iran might deliberately release Uranium and other radioactive toxins into the environment in order to blame "Evil-Amrika" and its "minion, Israel" for the disaster.
'It is therefore unlikely that there will be a catastrophic impact on the environment as a direct result of Suxnet [sic] infection.'
I do not agree with this statement. Stuxnet is capable of being updated, either via code embedded in anti-virus software (or other malware, or valid SCADA updates), or via the web (http://tinyurl.com/36y7jzb), so any "Iranian specificity" could be easily removed. According to Symantec, there are 90,000+ systems infected with Stuxnet, most in Iran, but some 5,000+ in the US and Australia. The infected Australian computers are likely associated with mining operations, with high potential for loss of life.
This will attract the attention of hackers and industrial espionage agents alike.
Stuxnet has the ability to operate and remain hidden at the kernel level, and so many more systems than estimated by Symantec may be infected.
This information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet and the reference list at the end of the article.
Stuxnet WILL be adapted to other applications. US drones, anyone?
Well, unless you wrote the code, your explanation differs widely from available facts.
Accordingly Stuxnet is specifically written to fake calibration output for a a particular series of Siemens industrial motor control software.
The best way to get rid of Stuxnet is to decommission all suspect hardware and software which is near impossible for the Iranians under a new set of UN sanctions.
Drone software employs proprietary DoD code. Two different cattle of fish. Sorry.
I know that drones do not use SCADA; it was a flippant comment. BTW, its not 'proprietary DoD code' - there is no such thing. The firmware was written by contractors, probably decades ago, and so may or may not be property of the US Government - the language and protocols used are certainly not proprietary. US drones have already been infiltrated.
There is no such a thing as a non-proprietary code when it comes to US Air force or any other US forces hardware/software.
All controlled deploy-able systems are proprietary, period.
Israel makes some drones under licence too, but even their software/firmware is still a DoD property .
I'm sorry, I don't agree. In my experience, the US Government does not write software. Instead, contractors write software and effectively give pseudo-unlimited license to the Government. That license states that the Government can reproduce, prepare derivative works, perform or publicly display, but not distribute to the public. Contractually, copyright and patent protection belongs with the contractor. Every Government contract for software contains Limited Rights Notice FAR 52.227-15 which allows the contractor-developer to retain many rights to the software.
I'll not go into trademarks, intellectual property and trade secrets, as that is all legal goobledygook to me, but strongly suggests that the Government does not have proprietary ownership over the software it pays contractors to develop.
I've cut a lot of code for the DoD and DoE in my younger days, and I don't think anything has changed much.
Parts of this lax DoD 3rd party property rights can explain how a bunch of streets kids in Iraq managed to hack into drone video feeds last year.
Pretty stupid but quite scary.
Agreed. I am guessing that this "little problem" has been solved by using encrypted feeds.
I did some of the earliest work on encrypted real-time C&C in the mid-90s, and we used PgP then. I have no idea what DoD is using today, but PgP was pretty strong so I would not be surprised if PgP is still being used.
For some reason, this brought to mind the prediction of an old friend of mine who passed away last year. He said the probable end of civilization would take place in 2013. He said that some American, totally disgusted with what the government is doing would set off a nuclear weapon in DC. The Pentagon would immediately launch everything they had, followed by counter strikes by any nation capable of defending itself. A few years after he made this prediction, he became acquainted with the Mayan calendar. He thought it was an interesting coincidence.
That scenario would leave any survivors as a bunch of sick hunter-gatherers trying to survive on a poisoned planet.
Sic transit gloria mundi.