Iran Arrests Alleged Spies Over Stuxnet Worm 261
kaptink writes "Reports surfacing from Iran claim 'nuclear spies' have been arrested over the infection at the Busheher nuclear station, which opened in August. According to Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, because Stuxnet is so sophisticated, cost so much to write and uses two stolen security certificates, he believes only a national intelligence agency or a huge private company could have devised it, calling them 'enemies' spy services."
It needed in country personnel? WTF (Score:1, Interesting)
I haven't heard anyone arguing against it being written by a foreign nation or major company, but I wonder why they arrested spies for it though. I thought the whole point of releasing the worm in the wild was to be able to infect from anywhere, with no need to directly get into the facilities, or even Iraq itself for that matter.
Re:They don't say who they think it is (Score:3, Interesting)
FTA
Admittedly I didn't know much about Stuxnet until after reading more about it and it seems to me just yet another windows virus that hasn't until now been discovered and mistakenly spread via contractors laptops.
There's a lot of hype over this nuclear reactor however the fact of the matter is that it was only one of many infected areas and the rest of it is simply speculation about what damage could have been done there, what someone planned to spy on, etc. Seems to me that this worm wasn't designed for a specific target and is like any other virus.. well that or this is how Skynet starts becoming self-aware and begins manufacturing terminators..
I mean think about when was the last time the US government could do dick with computers? The US government was broken into by some retard in the UK using default passwords. How can people seriously believe the US government could come out with something like this. With all the media about the aurora virus i'd suspect the Chinese behind something like this way before America.
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Interesting)
A catastrophic meltdown benefits nobody. It wouldn't be sufficient to wipe out all of Iran's military capabilities and it would likely cause them to reflexively strike Israel. Not good.
It would destroy their plant, their centrifuges, and their current ability to enrich uranium, and would give them a giant, expensive mess to clean up. They know if their plant were to be destroyed they would be seen internationally as stupid buffoons incapable of safely executing nuclear tasks, when their goal is to be seen as a mature modern nuclear power who should be taken seriously.
A meltdown would likely cost them ten years to recover from, and the current regime may be too fragile to survive it.
Iran is not a completely crazy country. Sure, the leadership is run by corrupt figures who use religious zealotry to organize the poor in order to remain in power, but that's no different than many Western countries. But many Iranians are middle class kinds of people, not the raving lunatics who want to nuke the rest of the world like they portray on TV. It's certainly possible that if the current leaders were to stumble on the national stage that the poor might see them for who they are, and violently remove them from power.
Re:They don't say who they think it is (Score:5, Interesting)
Iran is a ratified signatory to the Nuclear Non-Profileration Treaty, so: they certainly don't have the right to develop nuclear weapons or even nuclear facilities except with IAEA oversight. Iran's nuclear activity is pretty clearly in contravention of this (they built a nuclear facility in secret near Qom [wikipedia.org], for example), and there are now several UN sanctions in force against Iran because of this.
Is it 'Western hubris' to demand that a country abide by treaties it ratified? Especially a treaty on a matter as important as nuclear armament...
The reason the West is so hostile to the possibility of a nuclear Iran is that the only peaceful doctrine nuclear weapons allow, MAD [wikipedia.org], assumes rational actors on all sides. In Iran that rationality might well be subservient to theology.
Re:Bah! (Score:4, Interesting)
This newsarticle is pure BS. The attack didn't target Bushehr: when Stuxnet became public, Bushehr wasn't even online yet. Stuxnet targeted the iraniane Uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz and presumable other, secret, places. Those all use Siemens PLCs too and the code in Stuxnet for the PLCs is actually geared to break those centrifugues. It's also a much more sensible target IT wise: all the centrifuges are controlled by the same PLCs, the same programs running on each PLC for each centrifuge.
Corroberating this is that in early 2009 shortly after Stuxnet was known, Iran publically suffered a big setback in nuclear enrichment and the government official in charge of the nuclear program was let go.
So Stuxnet was successful in its mission to disrupt the nuclear program and heads rolled in Iran while some unspecified intelligence agencies got high fives all around.
Re:Eh.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It was never the claim that these arrested people are the ones who wrote the virus.
The article is quite thin on details, but I assume they arrested people they blame on espionage within the plant; either people with access to the computers (do we know if the infection was via internet or via flash drives?), or those who had detailed knowledge of what specific machinery/PLCs were installed and could pass it on to whomever wrote the custom-tailored virus.
Instead of knee-jerk saying Iran is arresting for political purposes, maybe we should consider that perhaps Iran did arrest actual collaborators? Everyone knows there are CIA and Mossad operatives in Iran.
Re:The country that cried wolf (Score:5, Interesting)
Except maybe for the beautiful landscape and friendly people? Unlike most commenters here, I did hike in Iran. There are no maps there, or trails, you just have to go by spoken directions ("take a taxi to XYZ and then head south for two days"). Which means you can get horribly lost.
And info on the safety situation can be just as fuzzy, people in the cities (worldwide) have no idea what the situation in the mountain is, but will give you their personal fabricated opinion as a fact.
Personally I would be most worried about anti personel mines that are scattered throughout the border region. Against Iraqi troops, fugitives, and smugglers.
But Iraq is a big country, and can be hell on one spot and perfectly safe on another. As a matter of fact, just spoke someone last week who had just returned from a climbing trip in Afghanistan. Not being a couch potatoe does not equal to being a CIA agent
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
First, the Iranians were stupid enough to get hit with this, since they apparently didn't have appropriate IT policies in place to prevent malware. Secondly, they apparently didn't have the know-how to figure out what Stuxnet actually did. Finally, several months later, when someone pointed out what it did, they use it as an excuse to arrest some guys that they didn't like.
Triple Fail.
Well our own govt keeps getting hit with quite sophisticated attacks originating in China. The difference appears to be that China is mostly just stealing technology at this point, but if they decide to turn hostile they are probably deep enough into our systems to cause serious infrastructure damage.
Re:How come Iran can do it when others can't? (Score:5, Interesting)
Allah is one weird entity. Apparently, under traditional Muslim belief, Allah is so other that one can never communicate with It directly. Errr...so how do they explain Muhammad? Dunno. Anyhow, Muslims are fond of saying "if Allah wills it" to apply to any of their wishes. Okay, so..this Allah entity, he apparently willed Jews to create modern Israel? Or the Saudi royal family? Or forces making Muslims "victims" in the modern world? The schism between Sunnis and Shi'ites? What about the Alawis, Sufis, or any of the other innumerable Islamic sects?
If Allah is so just, how to explain the status of women in the Islamic world? What about the infidels? Islam is supposed to be a tolerant religion. Okay, where are the Christian churches in Saudi Arabia or the Jewish Temples? How come the Ba'hai are persecuted in Iran? What's with the Fatwas for killing whomever the Fatwa-er deems deserving of death? If Allah is It's cracked up to be, how come It cannot defend Its own turf and must rely on Muslims to do Its dirty work? And if It is so other, how can Muslims be relied on to interpret what It wants?
Re:Bah! Silly (Score:4, Interesting)
What was started by people who just wanted their constitution back, of course has drawn attempts from all over to co-opt it in some way. Duh....don't you know how things work?
Even on NPR...they had an "interview" with a Texas woman who was a real tea party organizer, and cut in with some dude who was one of those religious wing nuts (only a member of the tea party, so he said) who basically, right there on the air threatened that if the tea party didn't go his way (org of family something or other) they'd pull out. She said, fine -- you are welcome here, it's a big tent, but nope, we're not going to push your particular cause for you, why not go try and convince the NRA to push laws against abortion -- you're in the wrong place.
Though NPR is showing signs of seeing blood in the water and not as much a cheerleader of the current majority in government as before, this was their big attempt to discredit the tea party, and it failed pretty badly I think.
When something like that comes from nowhere and threatens the incumbency machine that is the rebuplocrats -- sure, there's going to be a s**t storm of attempts to discredit it, again, doh.
If either the dems or the repubs were "for the people" would there be the mickey mouse copyright law? Would pot still be illegal? Wouldn't someone at least have gone to jail over the economic issues? I'm too lazy to type the other five hundred examples, do some homework.
You might not like the tea party, and for sure it has collected some whack jobs -- big tents do that.
Wouldn't a bunch of crazy incompetents do a better job than the current batch of well connected thieves?
I rest my case.
Re:The country that cried wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
Why in the hell would the CIA send three very obviously non-Iranian looking Americans hiking around the Iranian border?
You're an idiot to think they have anything to do with the CIA. They are were "caught" after visiting the Ahmed Awa waterfall, which happens to be only a few miles from the Iranian border. They are nothing more than a bunch of hippie activists who were stupid enough to wander into a questionable area.
Oh really? Bunch of hiipies who happen to have visited many trouble spot on earth including iraq and somalia. and happen to be "hiking" around one of the most heavily mined borders in the world got past those without a scratch hmm interesting. Tell me what the american Government would have done if bunch of Iranians shows up accross the canadia/mexican border and claimed to have accidentally hiked into the US.
Re:They don't say who they think it is (Score:1, Interesting)
Iran runs an enormous trade deficit with Russia.
Re:The country that cried wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Iran is not a completely crazy country. Sure, the leadership is run by corrupt figures who use religious zealotry to organize the poor in order to remain in power, but that's no different than many Western countries. But many Iranians are middle class kinds of people, not the raving lunatics who want to nuke the rest of the world like they portray on TV. It's certainly possible that if the current leaders were to stumble on the national stage that the poor might see them for who they are, and violently remove them from power.
Wow. This sounds like you live in Iran, since you know so much.
You do live in Iran, don't you?
I mean, you've at least been to Iran once, haven't you?
Ah, I see.
I've been to Iran three times since 2003, and I can agree with the person that you are responding to. I've been to three major cities - Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz. I do have relatives there, so I may be biased. The majority of the people that I've met and spoken to are moderates who are stuck under the thumb of an oppressive regime. Every time they try protest, the government mobilizes their armed thugs to quash it. And since weapons are banned in Iran, the citizens have no means of defending themselves.
It's one of the biggest reasons why I fully support the second amendment. People seriously have no idea how good it is in America to be able to purchase a gun to protect yourself. Sure, the government will always be allowed to have higher powered shit, but at least the people have SOMETHING to defend themselves with. And the total population of people will always outnumber the government.
Anyway, the people there are very moderate. Islam is their main religion because it's what they're born into, but many Iranians, especially those who move overseas, later adopt a more spiritual view on religion than a hardcore stance. In one of the recent protests, people were chanting "No help for Hezbollah, no help for Palestine, support the Iranian people". The people are pissed that the government is spending money on propping up those groups rather than spending it on infrastructure. The political mood there has been, for the last decade, really sickening and every year that goes by, the people get more restless.
Change is bound to happen, and hopefully it happens before anything really bad occurs in that region.
Re:Bah! (Score:1, Interesting)
Iran is not a completely crazy country. Sure, the leadership is run by corrupt figures who use religious zealotry to organize the poor in order to remain in power, but that's no different than many Western countries. But many Iranians are middle class kinds of people, not the raving lunatics who want to nuke the rest of the world like they portray on TV. It's certainly possible that if the current leaders were to stumble on the national stage that the poor might see them for who they are, and violently remove them from power.
It's only crazy by western standards ....
Most of the Muslims in Iraq were dragged kicking and screaming into Islam by the hostile takeover of the government, which then publicly declared every Iranian citizen was now Islamic, and punishment for changing your religion was death.
In case the world hasn't been watching, Iranian citizens HAVE been protesting the government ... and I don't doubt that some help would be greatly appreciated :)
One of my friends just went back to Iran, poor bugger, and the guy drinks like a fish and loves his bacon .... here at least.