The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Iran admits cyberattack hit nuke programme

Imadinnerjacket's centrifuges unspun

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today seemed to confirm speculation that the Stuxnet worm obstructed his regime's nuclear ambitions.

"Several" uranium enrichment centrifuges were damaged by the virus, he told a press conference.

"They were able to create problems on a limited basis for some of our centrifuges by software installed in electronic equipment," Ahmadinejad said.

Security analysts have speculated for months that Stuxnet is a digital weapon aimed at Iran's nuclear facilities at Bushehr and Natanz.

Reverse engineering of the worm has revealed it is able to infect the Siemens industrial control systems used at the plants. It then makes subtle, damaging changes to frequency converter drives that operate in a frequency range used in uranium enrichment.

"Our specialists stopped that and they will not be able to do it again," Ahmadinejad said.

Speculation as to the source of Stuxnet has centred on Israel, which is known to have advanced cyber attack capabilities.

Ahmadinejad also dismissed Wikileaks' disclosures about Iran's relations with its Arab neighbours. He claimed the US had deliberately leaked the cables, which show the king of Saudi Arabia calling for military action against his regime, adding "we don't give any value to these documents".

Separately, Iran also blamed Israel and the West for two explosions today targeting its nuclear scientists. One was killed and one injured in simultaneous operations. Assassins on motorbikes had reportedly attached bombs to the scientists' moving cars and detonated them from a distance. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Anonymous Coward

Does murdering scientists count as terrorism?

I guess not, if the USA or Israel is doing it.

7
0

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Imadinnerjacket........HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

3
0

You're taking the mickey, right?

Please tell me you're taking the mickey.

Stuxnet and its follow ons do not require internet-facing systems.

They may not even require USB sticks.

The device used to program PLCs is called (amongst other things) a "programming panel". These days it probably has Windows inside. You connect the "panel" to the plant admin LAN for genuine valid reasons. The panel gets infested with a (by definition undetectable) 0day exploit that is already on the LAN. The panel is then moved (physically or virtually) onto the automation LAN which does not have, has never had, and does not need, a connection to The Internet, and at that point the infected panel also compromises all the relevant boxes on the automation LAN.

Job done.

Get a clue Fred, or make yourself like as much of an idiot as Brian did.

1
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Number of cops abusing Police National Computer access on the rise
Only a telegram from the Queen can get you off it
 breaking news
NSA PRISM snoop-gate: Won't someone think of the children, wails Apple
10,000 things probed, mostly about missing kids, Alzheimer patients, we're told
Flash flaw potentially makes every webcam or laptop a PEEPHOLE
But it's a Google problem - Chrome only, insists Adobe
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
 breaking news
Yahoo! joins! rivals! in! PRISM! data! request! admission!
Keep calm and carry on using American tech firms, folks
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
DHS warns of vulns in hospital medical equipment
Has your doctor's anasthesia machine been hacked?
 breaking news
'BadNews is malware' says outfit that found it
Google says code harmless but Lookout says code base is evolving