stuxnet, part duex

[jonKranked]

dunno if it was actually a stuxnet variant, but iran's ability to ship oil has been crippled.


http://gizmodo.com/5904299/virus-att...ls-iranian-oil

[dante]

US/Israel vs Iran.....

[jonKranked]

just to clarify: they are still able to produce oil, but their ability to ship/export it (and actually sell it to generate income) has been crippled. which is bad news, because oil exports account for most of the nations economy.

[$tinkle]

hbd lee majors

coincidence?

[dante]

And I'm pretty sure that they have limited storage capacity... which means that they'll have to stop producing if they can't get this fixed, pronto.

[MikeD]

hbd lee majors

coincidence?

nyyyyyinnnngggggnnyyyyyyyinnnnnnnggnyyyyyinnnngggggnnyyyyyyyinnnnnnnggnyyyyyinnnngggggnnyyyyyyyinnnnnnngg

[$tinkle]

Powerful "Flame" cyber weapon found in Iran

(Reuters) - Security experts said on Monday a highly sophisticated computer virus is infecting computers in Iran and other Middle East countries and may have been deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.

Kaspersky researchers said they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.

Cyber security experts said the discovery publicly demonstrates what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.

"This is one of many, many campaigns that happen all the time and never make it into the public domain," said Alexander Klimburg, a cyber security expert at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs.

A cyber security agency in Iran said on its English website that Flame bore a "close relation" to Stuxnet, the notorious computer worm that attacked that country's nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.

Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran have said were responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

Kaspersky Lab said it discovered Flame after a U.N. telecommunications agency asked it to analyze data on malicious software across the Middle East in search of the data-wiping virus reported by Iran.

STUXNET CONNECTION

Experts at Kaspersky Lab and Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security who have spent weeks studying Flame said they have yet to find any evidence that it can attack infrastructure, delete data or inflict other physical damage.

Yet they said they are in the early stages of their investigations and that they may discover other purposes beyond data theft. It took researchers months to determine the key mysteries behind Stuxnet, including the purpose of modules used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran.

If Kaspersky's findings are validated, Flame could go down in history as the third major cyber weapon uncovered after Stuxnet and its data-stealing cousin Duqu, named after the Star Wars villain.

[syadasti]

Related - guess companies shouldn't advertise hardware with military grade encryption as a selling point anymore:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Assurance

[$tinkle]

his papers from almost a decade back are troubling.

all your base are belong to us, indeed

[$tinkle]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/wo...pagewanted=all



e: understatement of the article

“It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand.”

[Pesqueeb]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/wo...pagewanted=all



e: understatement of the article

If there is truth in that article, that's an act of war. How many is this now for President Nobel Peace Prize?

[$tinkle]

i'm not so sure about that.

P1: cyberterrorism, as defined by the pentagon, is indeed an act of war
P2: stuxnet, et al, when broadly defined, meet this definition
C: it depends what the meaning of the word 'is' is

e: paging john yoo to the yellow courtesy phone

[$tinkle]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77089.html

let it go, old man.
you lost.

[$tinkle]

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002403.html

I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility Fordo near Qom.

According to the email our cyber experts sent to our teams, they believe a hacker tool Metasploit was used. The hackers had access to our VPN. The automation network and Siemens hardware were attacked and shut down. I only know very little about these cyber issues as I am scientist not a computer expert.

There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC.