Stuxnet: Target Bushehr?

[davidbfpo]

An IISS Strategic Comment, which provides a good IMHO overview, starts:

..it is essentially a delaying tactic and has not dimmed the country’s resolve to develop nuclear capabilities..

and ends with:

Cyber sabotage is likely only to buy time for the international community to devise alternative policy responses to Iran’s nuclear programme. In the meantime, sanctions and negotiations are likely to remain their priority.

Link:http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...ear-programme/

[Cannoneer No. 4]

http://www.rockto.com/launcher/33781...ed-code-online

The Anonymous group released the Stuxnet code on 13 February, after finding it in a database of e-mails it stole from HBGary. “First public Stuxnet decompile is to be found here,” one representative of the group wrote over Twitter.

[Rex Brynen]

Iran's Natanz nuclear facility recovered quickly from Stuxnet cyberattack

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 16, 2011; 12:00 AM

VIENNA - In an underground chamber near the Iranian city of Natanz, a network of surveillance cameras offers the outside world a rare glimpse into Iran's largest nuclear facility. The cameras were installed by U.N. inspectors to keep tabs on Iran's nuclear progress, but last year they recorded something unexpected: workers hauling away crate after crate of broken equipment.

In a six-month period between late 2009 and last spring, U.N. officials watched in amazement as Iran dismantled more than 10 percent of the Natanz plant's 9,000 centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium. Then, just as remarkably, hundreds of new machines arrived at the plant to replace the ones that were lost....

[anonamatic]

he Anonymous group released the Stuxnet code on 13 February, after finding it in a database of e-mails it stole from HBGary. “First public Stuxnet decompile is to be found here,” one representative of the group wrote over Twitter.

Stuxnet lacked, as can be seen readily by some of the results of the HBGary debacle, what's known as 'anti-reverse' code. Meaning it didn't have any provisions to protect it against decompilation or reverse engineering. Which considering everything else it was doing was something of a serious oversight.

It had somewhat obscure, but still present pointers that have caused some attempts at attribution in the code. That if it was intentionally diversionary was a good idea. If it wasn't a diversion, well obviously in that case it's clear it was a really bad idea.

Strategically there are some different things I probably would have done that the authors didn't do. On the other hand, it did some really slick things too, and interestingly enough the stuff that's interesting are attributes that aren't of any great use to the criminal malware community, and granted it's something of an idiot filled sewer, but not completely either. If that was the case no one would need AV software anymore.

Overall it's some pretty fine work. There's more I could say about the technical aspects of it, but in the interests of common sense I'll refrain. I will say that some of architecture was very impressive, and that the attention it's gotten from some of the technology community is not pure hyperbole. This was some very well thought out code, and implemented very well aside from the few criticisms I've made.

[AdamG]

On the Trail of Stuxnet
March 11, 2011

Last year, somebody somewhere – possibly a government, possibly several governments – unleashed one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever created, specially designed apparently to target Iran’s uranium enrichment program. In a gripping narrative in Vanity Fair, author Michael Joseph Gross follows the trail of the so-called Stuxnet virus and argues that it marks cyberwarfare’s Hiroshima moment.

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/03/11/07

[AdamG]

Iran has been hit with new malicious software as part of cyber attacks against the country, a military officer told Mehr news agency on Monday without specifying the target.
"Certain characteristics about the 'Stars' virus have been identified, including that it is compatible with the (targeted) system," Gholam Reza Jalali, commander of the Iranian civil defence organisation, told the agency.

"In the initial stage, the damage is low and it is likely to be mistaken for governmental executable files," Jalali said, adding that Iranian experts were still investigating the full scope of the malware's abilities.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

[AdamG]

VIENNA — The U.N. nuclear agency is investigating reports from its experts that their cellphones and laptops may have been hacked into by Iranian officials looking for confidential information while the equipment was left unattended during inspection tours in the Islamic Republic, diplomats have told The Associated Press.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...ec3_lnk1|63967

[AdamG]

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Then Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the sabotage of Iran's nuclear programme in 2006, according to WikiLeaks documents published by Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot on Thursday.

The leaked documents, which were not immediately available on either the Yediot or Wikileaks websites, purportedly detail talks between the head of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission and then-US ambassador to Israel Richard Jones.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110519...ussiawikileaks