Monday, September 27, 2010

Iranian Computer Worm: 30,000 Computers May Be Infected - Was the German Siemens Corporation Making Up For Past Sins?

This is an extraordinary story. History is being made while we watch football and bake in the 110 degree Southern California heat.

From Roger Simon:


a ... big story with a potentially huge implications for geo-politics — the recent (and possibly ongoing) cyber attack on Iranian computers that may have temporarily crippled the nuclear capability (and who knows what else) of the totalitarian Islamic state.
Yesterday, I wrote some preliminary words about this highly sophisticated attack by the so-called “Stuxnet” worm; today we learn the startling news the Iranians themselves have admitted that something serious has happened. Such admissions are certainly not common from the secretive state. From Asia Bizz:
The Iranian Ministry has stated that some 30000 industrial computers have been infected by Stuxnet. One of the main operations done by Stuxnet is that it extracts vital information from these systems and then sends it somewhere abroad. Iran has termed this virus as a spy virus, as it is deploying vital data to other countries. On the other hand it is said, a similar attack has been reported from Iran’s latest nuclear power plant facility, but these reports have not yet been confirmed.
Three-thousand industrial computers … what industries and how extensive the damage is Iran isn’t saying. But we can hazard the guess that most of it is militarily related. Besides the ability to send information abroad, “Stuxnet” is reportedly able to commandeer computers and direct them to destroy what they are managing. If true, this changes the face of warfare.
How did it all start?  The conjecture is that someone stuck a thumb drive in a USB port and off went the malware to infect the network.  This, of course, suggests an inside job of some sort (more of that in a moment). As for whodunit,  among many others, Richard Falkenrath of the Chertoff Group says the attack was too extensive for hackers and was most likely the work of “state actors.”  Falkenrath suggests Israel, because he theorizes the U.S. would not take such a bold step.
That makes sense. But did the Israelis tell the US administration what they were up to — or did they just surprise us, as they did with the raid on Saddam’s Osirak reactor?  As you will recall, when Reagan’s national security adviser, in high dudgeon, reported on that Israeli action to the president, Reagan famously shrugged it off with a “boys will be boys.”  It’s hard to imagine Obama being so blase about anything where Israel is concerned, but some CIA or other U.S. intelligence  involvement in what has occurred remains a possibility.
In all likelihood Israel did not act entirely alone — there were too many moving parts to this attack — and I am going now to suggest another ally — the German electronics giant Siemens AG.
Iranian computers are PCs operating on Windows 7. The minds behind Stuxnet apparently discovered four new vulnerabilities in the latest Windows operating system previously unknown to Microsoft, two of which have reportedly already been plugged. (Nuclear weapons controlled by Windows?  Let’s not even go there.) The actual industrial equipment, however, is controlled by software specially designed for the Iranian by another company — the aforementioned Siemens.
Page 1 of 2  Next -> 

8 comments:

midnight rider said...

That's right gang. You heard it here first

Read all the articles and there is almost surely more to come this week.

The problem, as noted in one of my posts below, is if the NSA can see what Iran is doing, and thus so can Israel, what will stop the Mullahs from lashing out and turning their bombers loose?

Ahmedinejad is almost certainly history, now. No one yet knows how far this may set them back (okay, the NSA almost certainly knows) but what they're admitting to is most certainly only the tip of the real iceberg.

So we beat ALL of the MSM INCLUDING FOx, Newsmax and also The Blaze, Ace, Atlas and Weasel Zippers.

Ok, so Alexander and Rusty beat us. So what? (btw thanks to Alex for the email last night and Revere for the comment earlier this morning)

Alexander Münch said...

You know what Midnight, ( OK, & Pasto)

Even if only a few of Richard Falkenrath's speculations turn out to be true about the deeds of the Zionist Mr. Shtukman, then A'jad might be right by claiming persistently that the "Little Satan" pulled down the two WTC towers ! If the Zionist can Shtuk Down 30,000 Iranian computers by a single click on the mouse, imagine what a Mega Shtuking they could have done if they were using all the buttons of the key board !...

I swear on the holy Qur'an, I will never know who did it !

Alex.

Pastorius said...

You did it, didn't you, Alex?

Alexander Münch said...

I don't know Pasto,

What do you make out of this info:-
When the story first broke out on Sep 26th at about 07:00 LT,My son Amnon told me that his Twin brother told him that - "HIS father did it !"...
Now go and figure it out !

Alex.

Pastorius said...

MR,
We were the first to have this story?

Is that really true?

Did you get the scoop from Alexander?

midnight rider said...

Not quite first. Alex sent it to me via email and I saw it at Jawa about the same time as well as a comment by Revere
on an unrelated post. I hadn't seen it anywhere else at that point. Fox/AP didn't have it until hours later. Nor Newsmax. I still haven't seen it at MSNBC not sure about CNN. Weasel Zippers hasn't run it at all (at least not when I last looked a few hours ago). So yeah, thanks to Alex and a quick comment from Revere we were very early with it yesterday.

We certainly hammered it harder than anyone else early on.

You would think this would be much bigger in the news cycle. This is potentially devastating to the Iranians and very few are saying much at all.

midnight rider said...

I must stand corrected. Zip did have a quick post on Friday and Saturday before Iran admitted to it.

Mea Culpa.

Pastorius said...

That is still great.

That is a big, big story, and we were almost there first. And, we're the ones who care about a story like that, and we're not professionals.