SCADA worm a ‘nation state search-and-destroy weapon’
22nd September 2010
A highly sophisticated computer worm that has burrowed into industrial systems worldwide over the past year may have been a “search-and-destroy weapon” built to take out Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, according to news reports published on Tuesday.
The articles from IDG News and The Christian Science Monitor said the Stuxnet worm was programmed to probe the hosts it infected for extremely specific settings. Unless it identified the hardware fingerprint it was looking for in industrial software systems made by Siemens, it remained largely dormant.
It was only after a unique configuration on a Programmable Logic Controller device was detected that Stuxnet took action. Under those circumstances, the worm made changes to a piece of Siemens code called Operational Block 35, which monitors critical factory operations, according to IDG, which cited Eric Byres, CTO of a firm called Byres Security.
Both reports said the sophistication of Stuxnet suggests Israel or some other nation state is behind the worm and both articles cited speculation by Langner that the intended target may have been Iran’s Bushehr reactor, located about 750 miles from Tehran, that is under construction. The project faced reported delays around the same time Stuxnet is believed to have propagated, and the plant is believed to use the Windows-based Siemens software targeted in the attacks, IDG said.
Everybody keeps forgetting that Jews breed for intelligence.
September 22nd, 2010 at 11:43
There were some heavy duty rumors at the start of Desert Storm that the attack on Iraq was timed to match up with a virus or worm that infected Saddam’s defense system computers.