Stuxnet worm 'targeted high-value Iranian assets'

[hanshan]

i.e., Jack, just business as usual, eh?



...

That might be a way to describe it. What's your point?

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there is no point. just belaboring the obvious


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[JackRiddler]

there is no point. just belaboring the obvious

Well then here's a point. "Business as usual" is about the kinds of interests and the general morality, not the methods or details or contexts. And it doesn't justify anything to say that it's in some sense normal. Or make it less interesting to consider, for that matter.

[nathan28]

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Yeah, the Russians will get to the bottom of this total mystery somehow!

You know, the juxtaposition of the Stuxnet roll-out with the actual killings of Iranian scientists reminds me of Woodward's biometric infrared drone satellite wonder-weapon surge that supposedly killed the entire Iraqi Sunni insurgency to the man, a combo technology which probably really was implemented with whatever results it had or didn't have, but presented afterwards via Woodward as an attempt to take the stink off the actual strategies that "worked," which everyone could see operating from afar, of fomenting sectarian civil war, arming and training death squads, torture, gulags, ethnic cleansing, fake terrorist infiltration ("Al Qaeda in Iraq") and, of course, payoffs to the insurgents.

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They need to save face. This tale allows them to declare victory, by taking credit for the non-existent "technical difficulties" that caused a "delay" in the non-existent Iranian weapons program.

I think that this is it. IDK what actually happened. I'm just as sure that there's exaggeration in the US press and in the Iranian response. We are, after all, talking about a story that involves Ahmedinejad's buddies along with the Mossad and the Pentagon, none of whom have ever really stood out as beacons of honesty or transparency.

But what stands out to me is the Magical Technology!!! factor here. It seems to be a uniquely American brand of delusion to insist that gadgets, not people getting their hands dirty, are what's really responsible. This is a country where the Mythbusters goons film their Jackass-for-Science-Geeks (no disrespect meant to a personal hero, Johnny Knoxville) routine is somehow considered intellectual. And of course it deflects attention away from assassination programs (Iran) and Phoenix-style programs against the Sunni insurgents (Iraq).

Which I think might be the bigger point, I'm calling limited hangout on this one. "Assassinations of scientists? Don't know nothing 'bout that, but you should totally check out this E-War virus we made to attack their servers!"

And check out that infographic, which features a removable disk that magically gets onto the Iranian network. It's almost like Stuxnet was so powerful that a USB disk magically plugged itself into a computer, no human involvement whatsoever. I'll note that so far I've heard multiple incongruent explanations of how Stuxnet worked and what it did in theory.

Because seriously, underlying this Stuxnet nonsense is the suggestion that Iran doesn't have enough mechanics, IT guys or procurement officers with Russian manufacturers on rolodexes to replace their rotors and computers. Or that this involves any "boots on the ground", even if they are padded, noise-reduced CIA-Mossad (for real this time) boots. "Set back three years"--hey, buddy, this might look like a regular fried chicken leg, but for $5 I'll let you see the fearsome man-eating-chicken.

Newsweek quoted Stewart Baker saying Stuxnet was a state creation.

[barracuda]

I'm less impressed by Stuxnet than I used to be. As long as one can reach the PC used to write to the Programmable Logic Controller, you can fuck that shit up. I can imagine simply intercepting whole lots of removable drives en route to distributors known to deal with the state, and the targeting of specific geographic areas mighn't be so tough to accomplish.

However, if we're gonna view this thing as primarily a psyop, it does seem to rather conveniently allow an "explanation" of just why Iran never seems to come up with the nuclear bomb program folks have been pitching to the American public for the last ten years. We opened up a can of stuxnet on their ass. Bam. Right.

[nathan28]

I'm less impressed by Stuxnet than I used to be. As long as one can reach the PC used to write to the Programmable Logic Controller, you can fuck that shit up.

Yeah, it's really, really not impressive. If I want to cause hardware damage all I have to do is run a few very intensive tasks and use a single command to turn off the fans--oh, wow, CPU death. Magical hacking! How could it be?

However, if we're gonna view this thing as primarily a psyop, it does seem to rather conveniently allow an "explanation" of just why Iran never seems to come up with the nuclear bomb program folks have been pitching to the American public for the last ten years. We opened up a can of stuxnet on their ass. Bam. Right.

Check out what the CIA-Mossad-Disney-Reptilians paid an Iranian trucker to say about that:

xxxxxxxxxxxx, wanted to know, "Is it true that America doesn't
want Iran to have nuclear energy? Why?" (Most of the group
seemed surprised to hear that nuclear weapons, not energy,
are the cause of concern.)

http://213.251.145.96/cable/2010/01/10ASHGABAT118.html

But like I said, obviously, that trucker was an agent of the Elders of Zion--otherwise, how could he have had more insight into Iran than every bootlicking Poli-Sci type. He practically quoted the CIA FACTBOOK!!11!1!

Exports

petroleum, petrochemicals, fertilizers, caustic soda, textiles, cement and other construction materials, food processing (particularly sugar refining and vegetable oil production), ferrous and non-ferrous metal fabrication, armaments

It's like he knows that the three largest industries in the country his family lives in are based on selling and processing oil to and for the rest of the world instead of using it for domestic electricity! It's almost like he knows that nuclear power would enable more exports while maintaining or improving the standard of living! How could an illiterate opium-smoking central Asian trucker know more than the CFR, or the NY Times research staff? How is this even possible? There's only one answer: THE CIA.

[hanshan]

...

nathan28:

And check out that infographic, which features a removable disk that magically gets onto the Iranian network. It's almost like Stuxnet was so powerful that a USB disk magically plugged itself into a computer, no human involvement whatsoever. I'll note that so far I've heard multiple incongruent explanations of how Stuxnet worked and what it did in theory.

Because seriously, underlying this Stuxnet nonsense is the suggestion that Iran doesn't have enough mechanics, IT guys or procurement officers with Russian manufacturers on rolodexes to replace their rotors and computers. Or that this involves any "boots on the ground", even if they are padded, noise-reduced CIA-Mossad (for real this time) boots. "Set back three years"--hey, buddy, this might look like a regular fried chicken leg, but for $5 I'll let you see the fearsome man-eating-chicken.

Newsweek quoted Stewart Baker saying Stuxnet was a state creation.

The bold-faced racism is almost too much to stomach. Hey, know what? China
has a deal to import all their excess natural gas 'til 2025.

( edited to add attribution)


...

[nathan28]

Oh, golly, looks like Stuxnet was less successful than thought:

(Reuters) - Western powers should work on the assumption that Iran could have a nuclear weapon by next year and an Israeli intelligence assessment of 2015 could be over-optimistic, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said on Monday.

Meir Dagan, outgoing director of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, said this month that Israel believed Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear bomb before 2015.

But Fox, answering questions in parliament, said Dagan was "wrong to insinuate that we should always look at the more optimistic end of the spectrum" of estimates of Iran's nuclear capability.

"We know from previous experience, not least what happened in North Korea, that the international community can be caught out assuming that things are more rosy than they actually are," he said...

Israel's chief of military intelligence, Major-General Aviv Kochavi, who said sanctions had not held up Iran's nuclear program and it could produce bombs within two years.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/us-iran-nuclear-britain-idUSTRE70U5SV20110131

Sabre-rattling, or hand-waiving? Is this the "okay the Stuxnet thing was a bust", i.e., the limited hangout to the limited hangout? I'm not really sure why these guys don't just start talking in hieroglyphics.

[DrVolin]

Well, when someone starts claiming that the Israelis are too optimistic about Iran, you know they are up to something

[nathan28]

Oh, golly, looks like Stuxnet was less successful than thought:

Part II

Wash. Post:

Iran's Natanz nuclear facility recovered quickly from Stuxnet cyberattack

...But the IAEA's files also show a feverish - and apparently successful - effort by Iranian scientists to contain the damage and replace broken parts, even while constrained by international sanctions banning Iran from purchasing nuclear equipment. An IAEA report due for release this month is expected to show steady or even slightly elevated production rates at the Natanz enrichment plant over the past year.

"They have been able to quickly replace broken machines," said a Western diplomat with access to confidential IAEA reports. Despite the setbacks, "the Iranians appeared to be working hard to maintain a constant, stable output" of low-enriched uranium, said the official, who like other diplomats interviewed for this article insisted on anonymity to discuss the results of the U.N. watchdog's data collection.

"[L]ow-enriched uranium", i.e., presumably the type suitable for generators, not weapons, but I'd hardly rule out the possibility. None the less, electricity really does seem to be a goal. You only need a few nuclear weapons and it's a fairly thin buyer's market, after all, but you run the reactor 24/7.

Of course, not to be outdone by the Joint American-Saudi Business Development Soviet's mouthpiece or by the way-too-science-geeky whitecoatisms, which just aren't corporately correct enough, Reuters goes one step farther in promoting the party line, quoting the Ford/Carnegie/Rich Dude Foundation psyop arm of the IAEA, ISIS.

(Reuters) - The Stuxnet computer worm caused relatively limited damage to Iran's nuclear program and failed to stop the Islamic republic stockpiling enriched uranium, a U.S.-based think-tank said in a report.

...The worm, which has been described as a guided cyber missile, possibly originated in Israel or the United States.

Stuxnet is believed to have knocked out in late 2009 or early 2010 about 1,000 centrifuges -- machines used to refine uranium -- out of the 9,000 used at Iran's Natanz enrichment plant, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said...

"[D]estruction was by no means total," ISIS experts David Albright, Paul Brannan and Christina Walrond wrote in the analysis dated February 15.

"Assuming Iran exercises caution, Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the Natanz plant. Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems."

Enriched uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power plants, which is Iran's stated aim, or provide material for bombs if processed much further.

[Plutonia]

One of my favorite recent headlines:

Anonymous could launch Stuxnet attack on Iran

Anons got Stuxnet when they hacked HBGary. Crowdleaks had an engineer look at the code.
Results:Stuxnet? Meh.

Crowdleaks.org had a software engineer (whose name has been withheld) look at the Stuxnet binaries inside of a debugger and offer some insight on the worm. She informed us that most of the worms’ sources were using code similar to what is already publically available. She noted that the only remarkable thing about it was the 4 windows 0 days and the stolen certificates.

She says:

“A hacker did not write this, it appears to be something that would be produced by a team using a process, all of the components were created using code similar to what is already publically available. That is to say it’s ‘unremarkable’. This was created by a software development team and while the coders were professional level I am really not impressed with the end product, it looks like a picture a child painted with finger paints.”

When asked what type of organization likely wrote it, she stated:

“Probably a corporation by request of a government, it was clearly tested and put together by pro’s. It really looks like outsourced work.”

http://crowdleaks.org/hbgary-wanted-to- ... -research/

You can look at it yourself here: https://github.com/Laurelai/decompile-dump#readme

[JackRiddler]

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FWIW Department.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/world ... nted=print
Link included, strictly non-commercial fair-use archive for education and debate.

February 25, 2011
Iran Reports a Major Setback at a Nuclear Power Plant
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Iran told atomic inspectors this week that it had run into a serious problem at a newly completed nuclear reactor that was supposed to start feeding electricity into the national grid this month, raising questions about whether the trouble was sabotage, a startup problem, or possibly the beginning of the project’s end.

In a report on Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran told inspectors on Wednesday that it was planning to unload nuclear fuel from its Bushehr reactor — the sign of a major upset. For years, Tehran has hailed the reactor as a showcase of its peaceful nuclear intentions and its imminent startup as a sign of quickening progress.

But nuclear experts said the giant reactor, Iran’s first nuclear power plant, now threatens to become a major embarrassment, as engineers remove 163 fuel rods from its core.

Iran gave no reason for the unexpected fuel unloading, but it has previously admitted that the Stuxnet computer worm infected the Bushehr reactor. On Friday, computer experts debated whether Stuxnet was responsible for the surprising development.

Russia, which provided the fuel to Iran, said earlier this month that the worm’s infection of the reactor should be investigated, arguing that it might trigger a nuclear disaster. Other experts said those fears were overblown, but noted that the full workings of the Stuxnet worm remained unclear.

In interviews Friday, nuclear experts said the trouble behind the fuel unloading could range from minor safety issues and operational ineptitude to serious problems that would bring the reactor’s brief operational life to a premature end.

“It could be simple and embarrassing all the way to ‘game over,’ ” said David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former official at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees nuclear reactors in the United States.

Mr. Lochbaum added that having to unload a newly fueled reactor was “not unprecedented, but not an everyday occurrence.” He said it happened perhaps once in every 25 or 30 fuelings. In Canada, he added, a reactor was recently fueled and scrapped after the belated discovery of serious technical problems.

“This could represent a substantial setback to their program,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said of the problem behind the Bushehr upset.

“It raises questions of whether Iran can operate a modern nuclear reactor safely,” he added. “The stakes are very high. You can have a Chernobyl-style accident with this kind of reactor, and there’s lots of questions about that possibility in the region.”

The new report from the I.A.E.A. — a regular quarterly review of the Iran nuclear program to the agency’s board — gave the reactor unloading only brief mention and devoted its bulk to an unusually toughly worded indictment of Iranian refusals to answer questions about what the inspectors called “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program.

The report alluded to “new information recently received,” suggesting continuing work toward a nuclear warhead.

But the inspectors provided no details about the new information or how it was received. The I.A.E.A. frequently gets its data from the intelligence agencies of member countries, including the United States, but it also tries to collect data from its own sources.

The report on Friday referred directly to concerns that Iran was working on “the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.” But it noted that all of its requests for information had been ignored for years, with Iranian officials arguing that whatever information the agency possessed, it was based on forgeries.

The White House said Friday that the report cast new light on what it called Iran’s covert movement toward nuclear arms.

“The I.A.E.A.’s reports of obstruction and Iran’s failure to cooperate are troubling,” said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council. “We will continue to hold Iran accountable to its international nuclear obligations, including by deepening the international pressure on Iran.”

The reactor is located outside the Iranian city of Bushehr on the nation’s Persian Gulf coast. Priced at more than a billion dollars, it is ringed by dozens of antiaircraft guns and large radar stations meant to track approaching jets.

Its tangled history began around 1975 with a West German contract. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the West Germans withdrew. Iraq repeatedly bombed the half-built reactor between 1984 and 1988.

Iran signed a rebuilding accord with Russia in 1995 that should have had the project completed in 1999. But the plan bogged down in long delays.

The United States once opposed the plant. But Washington dropped its objections after Russia agreed to take back the spent rods, removing the possibility that Iran could reprocess them for materials that could fuel nuclear arms.

The loading of uranium fuel into the reactor was initially planned to start soon after its shipment to Bushehr last August, but was delayed by what the Iranians said was a leak in a pool near the central reactor.

In October, Iranian officials said the Stuxnet worm had infected the reactor complex, but they played down the issue. Mohammad Ahmadian, an Iranian Atomic Energy Organization official, said the affected computers had been “inspected and cleaned up.”

Later in October, as the fueling at last got under way, after three decades of delay, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, called the Bushehr reactor “the most exceptional power plant in the world.”

In December, he predicted that the plant would be connected to the national power grid by Feb. 19. “This phase,” he said, according to The Tehran Times, “is the most important operational work of the plant.”

In an interview on Friday, a European diplomat familiar with Iran’s nuclear program called the fueling problem a major setback, even if the technical cause proves to be less than monumental.

“It’s clearly a significant setback to the startup of the reactor,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of the matter.

He said that engineers at Bushehr had identified a technical failure, but were struggling to understand its cause.

“It’s too early to know,” the diplomat said. “I’m sure the Iranians are studying that question quite desperately.”

NYT writes this paradoxically, as though there clearly is and there clearly isn't an Iranian weapons program. (I'll stick with the NIE of 2007 assessment.)

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[DrVolin]

IMO, if Iran doesn't have some kind of a nuclear weapons program, someone over there is not doing his job.

[nathan28]

IMO, if Iran doesn't have some kind of a nuclear weapons program, someone over there is not doing his job.

IMO if Iran isn't directing most of their nuclear engineering R&D towards electricity, though, someone else really isn't doing his job. Maybe want to fire the entire economic advising staff if that's the case. "So we can... sell the oil... or burn it to power TVs and Tehran nightclubs..." etc.

[Ben D]

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3597/bushehr

Bushehr Cooling Pump

By Jeffrey | 28 February 2011 |

After the IAEA DG report on Iran noted that the Iranians were unloading the fuel from Bushehr, Bill Broad and David Sanger provided several column inches of speculation about whether STUXNET had struck again.

Now, Bill Broad reports that ROSATOM has offered a more “prosaic” explanation — a failed cooling pump that is about my age. (And, boy, do I feel like anything my age could fail at any moment!)

The Rosatom statement is in Russian:

28.02.2011 17:21 | Департамент коммуникаций Госкорпорации “Росатом”

В одном из четырех насосных агрегатов расхолаживания АЭС “Бушер” (Иран) были обнаружены повреждения внутренних элементов. В этой связи возникло предположение, что металлические частицы (преимущественно стружка размером менее 3 мм) могли вместе с водой проникнуть в корпус реактора и, пройдя через внутрикорпусные устройства, попасть на тепловыделяющие сборки (ТВС). Планируется, что, в случае обнаружения металлических частиц на ТВС, все сборки будут промыты, корпус реактора очищен, после чего топливо будет вновь загружено в реактор энергоблока.

Причиной выхода из строя насосного агрегата стали особенности конструктивного исполнения, в частности недостаточная надежность узла крепления внутренних устройств насоса. В результате узел пришел в негодность в условиях повышенной вибрации при пульсации давления, что характерно для центробежных насосов на низких подачах. Аналогичные несоответствия на других трех насосных агрегатах в результате ревизии устранены. Данные насосные агрегаты являются частью оборудования, поставленного на площадку АЭС “Бушер” в семидесятые годы прошлого века, которое, по условиям контракта, российская сторона была обязана интегрировать в проект.

С учетом того, что ядерное топливо еще не было активировано, работы по его выгрузке, осмотру, возможной промывке и загрузке с технической точки зрения являются штатной задачей, не требующей привлечения дополнительного оборудования и специалистов.

As Broad reports, this is Russian for “damage to one of the reactor’s four main cooling pumps … necessitated removal of the fuel core and an inspection of the reactor and its fuel assemblies …”

As explanations go, this is sort of boring — a 1970s-era German (or should I say West German) cooling pump didn’t age so well. Whereas the original story conjured terrifying images of men with beards and turbans on the verge of powering up CHERNOBYL: THE SEQUEL, today’s explanation only reminds us that parts get old and German engineers are, after all, human.

The Rosatom explanation seems plausible enough, not least because the day before Iran notified the IAEA it would unload fuel assemblies from the core, Sergey Kirienko “made a one-day working visit to Iran” to discuss “topical issues of preparation … including operation of the equipment supplied more than 30 years ago and integrated in the design.”

Rosatom announced that visit in English, as well as Russian, the day after Iran informed the IAEA it would unload the fuel.

[DrVolin]

IMO if Iran isn't directing most of their nuclear engineering R&D towards electricity, though, someone else really isn't doing his job.

Also true.