Stuxnet Worms On 141
Numerous Stuxnet related stories continue to flow through my bin today, so brace yourself:
Unsurprisingly, Iran blames Stuxnet on a plot set up by the West, designed to infect its nuclear facilities. A Symantec researcher analyzed the code and put forth attack scenarios. A Threatpost researcher writes about the sophistication of the worm. Finally, Dutch multinationals have revealed that the worm is also attacking them. We may never know what this thing was really all about.
Ghost? (Score:2)
Maybe it has a ghost that developed from the data inputs of over a billion individuals...
Iran should all buy Macs (Score:1, Flamebait)
</sarcastic joke>
Re:Iran should all buy Macs (Score:5, Funny)
And yet, Macs *are* capable of uploading viruses to alien ships.
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Only if the ships have certain specific PLCs.
That's what it was about! (Score:3, Informative)
The Earth was under attack by alien ships controlled by Siemens PLCs. Stuxnet was released to repel them and they all blew up and vanished into hyperspace. The whole thing was hushed up, of course, and what we are seeing is just the collateral damage.
Skynet (Score:2)
Seriously, though, it is Windows PC's that are present in government organizations, can gain sentience, and launch nuclear attacks to destroy all humans..
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WOPR was an IBM compatible?
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ICBM, actually.
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And yet, Macs *are* capable of uploading viruses to alien ships.
Yeah, but that app was rejected from the app store.
Never thought I would defend Iran, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Never thought I would defend Iran, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think he said there are no homosexuals in Iran, he said "We don't have gay people the way you do in America." I think he means they don't really have openly gay people in society like you find in New York. It's interesting because Iran actually allows and pays for sex-change surgeries.
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It's interesting because Iran actually allows and pays for sex-change surgeries.
Is that before or after they administer the death penalty for homosexual acts? [wikipedia.org] And they *sometimes* subsidize surgery [wikipedia.org], which is not the same as "pays for".
Fortunately, Iran doesn't consider the testimony of women to be trustworthy enough to consider as evidence (see first link).
Re:Never thought I would defend Iran, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats pretty much what he said. Actually, homosexuality in their culture is a whole topic unto itself. What was interesting to me was the way he seemed to imply that there is a difference between "public morality" and "private". Have you ever seen how many "witnesses" are required to accuse someone of certain things (like being a homosexual) under sharia law, for example?
What he seemed, to me, to be espousing was the idea that "what you do in private is between you and god, but, what other people see you do, is another matter". In some ways it reminds me of a japanese woman who was interviewed for the book "Lust in Translation" (never read it, but heard several stories about it) who was not mad at her husband for having an affair, as she had her own, but was mad that he was careless and allowed her to find out about it.
Having known a few Iranian ex-pats, I must say, they have a fascinating culture, and one thats very different from our own in many ways.
-Steve
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>they have a fascinating culture, and one thats very different from our own in many ways.
Finding a death penalty for homosexuality fascinating? It should be horrifying. Same thing for atheism or denying Islam.
>Thats pretty much what he said.
Err, transsexualism and homosexuality are two very different things. Iran has a lot of social pressures to force homosexuals into subsidized transsexual treatment, which does nothing but victimize and humiliate homosexuals who have no problem with their gender, its
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>they have a fascinating culture, and one thats very different from our own in many ways.
Finding a death penalty for homosexuality fascinating?
Since when the legal system, especially in a religious autocratic regime, is part of "culture".
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> Finding a death penalty for homosexuality fascinating? It should be horrifying. Same thing for atheism or denying
> Islam.
You do realize, I hope, that there is a difference between "I find it fascinating" and "I agree with it" or "I like it". You seem not. I find many aspects of the holocaust fascinating too, even though I have nothing against jews. Hell... I admonish our own soldiers and police for their willingness to use violence to solve problems, I certainly don't condone it in any other circums
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lol, troll huh?
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News flash, transsexualism and homosexuality are two very different things
Yep. This is especially troubling since only a minority of male-to-female transsexuals are "heterosexual"; in other words, men who get a sex change in order to become women are more likely to be attracted to women than to men. Which raises the question ... will the government of Iran pay to have a man made into a woman ... only to then execute "her" for having sex with a woman?
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most likely Israel or US?
I'm sure there are a lot of countries, like China, that would want to Iran stfu before they get blown up and the oil stops running. It's in the interest of pretty much any industrialised nation that war doesn't break out over Iran.
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China is closer to Iran than we are.
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Not only that, China lusts after Iranian oil. It would be in their interest to have a nuclear powered Iran since then they'd have more oil to export. China might feel it can get away with that policy since the Uighurs are Sunni, not Shi'ite and so are unlikely to be supported by Iran.
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China would like to move in.
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It's worth noting that although many systems have been compromised worldwide, the only reports of equipment actually being damaged are apocryphal reports of 'nuclear accidents' at Iran's centrifuge facilities. The international community has assumed that those accidents were caused by the worm, and Iran calling the worm an attack on their nuclear ambitions seams to support that claim. Personally, I find the second wave of infections more likely to be someone modifying the payload and basic parameters for
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The article on the Netherlands reports a satellite being knocked out of service. It may not be physical damage in the sense that you could go up there and hit the reboot switch, but short of a shuttle flight to rescue it, you can effectively consider that satellite to be destroyed. It's dead in space. Deceased. Bereft of life. Since it was probably a communications satellite, and thus a repeater, it's an ex-parrot.
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Exactly! Just like, Sony releasing a rootkit (that would have ended up in PMITA prison for you and me) ended up in viruses being written that target that rootkit's additional vulnerabilities. Thus, the second wave.
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And that's exactly the moral of the story, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Re:Never thought I would defend Iran, but... (Score:4, Informative)
I wouldn't even say most likely the US or Israel. I don't think there are many nations that want a Nuclear Iran.
The list should include.
China
Russia
India
All of the EU
Egypt
Most of the Middle East.
I mean really this list is long and while this worm is probably outside the limits for some guy with a grudge it isn't outside the limits for any nation with a large university with a good CS department.
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Russia does a lot of business with Iran. Ditto for Germany and the E.U. Where do you think they got all the Siemen's hardware and how do you think they flew it in?
"Friendly" nations engage in espionage too (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't even say most likely the US or Israel. I don't think there are many nations that want a Nuclear Iran. The list should include. China Russia India All of the EU Egypt Most of the Middle East. I mean really this list is long and while this worm is probably outside the limits for some guy with a grudge it isn't outside the limits for any nation with a large university with a good CS department.
Russia does a lot of business with Iran. Ditto for Germany and the E.U. Where do you think they got all the Siemen's hardware and how do you think they flew it in?
So some of these "friendly" countries had the best access to the iranian nuclear infrastructure, that's enough to warrant their inclusion on the list. Given that stuxnet was "dormant" and not attempting to damage anything it may have been more of an insurance policy and not so much of an active weapon. Any of these countries would love to monitor and have a remote off switch should Iran begin to act against their interests at some future date. Now is this the most likely scenario, no. However it is still hi
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So when it all blows up Iran will pay Russia to build it again for a pile of cash...
Repeat until done.
Also you might want to read up a bit. Russia has decided not to sell Iran a state of the art SAM system this week.
Oh and Germany. If it blows up they will again buy more stuff form them.
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I think Occam's Razor usually applies to suspects too. And in this case the most obvious suspect, with the most to gain by far, is Israel. There is even some evidence [zdnet.com] in the code that this is the case, and the Israeli government itself has openly acknowledged [upi.com] that it has extensive cyber-warfare plans.
Now of course, there are any number of ways to dismiss this if you REALLY want to believe that Israel wasn't involved (and it's always possible that they weren't). But you can do that with any case, no matte
Negative, only two probable choices (Score:2)
Could be any number of people (Score:2)
Possibly. What if they were having problems getting their plant working, and didn't want to look bad. Something like this might be a great way to blame the west, and get sympathy from other countries that might be willing to help out a victim of western aggression.
Or, this might be the work of a western NGO. There are any number of groups that aren
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Eheh (Score:2)
And the claim short skirts cause earth quakes, that a western agent shot Neda, that the elections were fair etc etc.
And then you swallow WHOLE the claim that Iran was hit hard by stuxnet... a claim made by WHO? Verified by who? And couldn't a big outbreak just be an indication of really bad security in Iran IF the claim is even true? The worm has also attacked in Indonesia and Holland. Might other places where better security kept it limited just kept quiet? After all, if MY security was bad I wouldn't tel
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Symantec made this crystal clear in their white paper [symantec.com] on the worm. Or do you think that Symantec is in the tank for Iran?
As for your rant about amateurs being able to write this worm, it's quite clear you haven't taken even a cursory look at it. Everyone who knows anything about worms who's looked at it has acknowledged that this is the most sophisticated piece of malware they've ever seen. This was
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Market for pirated Seimens PLCs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there a big market for pirated Seimens PLCs?
You know, the Chinese business plan where they run off extra copies after the assembly line closes, and sell them for pure profit? Also the move where they change virtually nothing but the name and start selling it as a generic model at Walmart / Harbor Freight / etc?
Maybe it was an attempt to "get" the infringing Chinese devices that got a little out of control and got the real ones too?
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Your hypothesis reminds me of the "Frankie" virus [nai.com] that targeted pirated versions of Aladin (a Mac emulator for Atari ST). It ended up attacking most Mac emulators on the ST, and not just the ones it was supposed to target (although some, like SPECTRE, were naturally immune).
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No. The PLCs are attached to multi-million dollar, room-sized equipment that was already purchased. Pirating a PLC is like buying an Rolls Royce Phantom for $450,000 and not wanting to pay $2.50 for a replacement spark plug.
Might not be the West... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure Stuxnet is in fact a sophisticated attack worm created by a government to slow or halt Iran in producing nuclear weapons.
There are plenty of candidates beyond the U.S. and Israel - Saudi Arabia for one, would be another country really not happy with a nuclear Iran, though certainly the U.S. or Israel seems most likely.
But lets consider the most intriguing possibility - a country with tons of expertise in developing advanced malware already, and one with incredibly detailed knowledge of Iranian systems.
Of course, I'm speaking of Russia.
At first it sounds crazy because Russian scientists are helping Iran build a reactor in the first place. But perhaps that help was lined up long before, and Russia has decided Iran is too crazy now to be allowed to have The Bomb, so they activated Stuxnet, prepared in advance for such an eventuality. Or perhaps they simply wanted to get money from the help and then the cleanup...
Russian scientists have been fleeing Iran because Iran is now going after guys in cubicles and saying they are spies. So perhaps even there, they know something most of us do not...
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Let's consider this possibility: Iran couldn't get the Nuclear Facility up and running properly so they needed a scapegoat. Now, it can't be something simple or else they'd be considered to be incompetent. Also, they'd need to be able to track the problem to a malevolent source, again, so they can shift all blame away from themselves. So what do they do? Create a virus that will be released into the wild and contains obscure references to past Israeli-Iranian conflicts. The virus has the bonus effect of all
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... Maybe it's some college buddies in Tel Aviv who decided that they wanted to target Iran, or maybe Stuxnet was just a worm of the week from blackhats (many of which are getting ridiculously complex) that just happened to get into the Iranian facilities ...
They needed a lot of expensive industrial control equipment to develop and test on.
MOD UP (Score:2)
They needed a lot of expensive industrial control equipment to develop and test on.
That is the part that totally screams to me "government".
Defiantly not the work of one guy in a basement.
Now it could be some large and well funded organization, sure. But I just don't buy that it's an amateur effort instead of a well funded affair, and if it's someone like organized crime where is the payoff? Organized crime funds botnets because they make money from them, it's why for some time now no worm or botnet has r
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A Siemens PLC costs less then $600. http://www.matrikonopc.com/opc-drivers/opc-siemens-s7-plc/base-driver-details.aspx [matrikonopc.com] It is not expensive to develop and test on.
You are forgetting all the things that plug into the PLC. Nuclear facility rated valves, pumps, etc.
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you dont need that for testing, you can simply monitor the outputs of the PLC to peripherals.
It would require some pretty depe knowledge of how the system is set up however, to plan a failure mode with the desired effect, you cant simply gamble on "close every valve in the system" if you want an effective attack.
So yeah, given the complexity of the targetted system, i think some college buddies in a basement in tel-aviv isnt very likely, this reaks of government involvement
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you dont need that for testing, you can simply monitor the outputs of the PLC to peripherals.
So your from the school of thought that code does not need to be tested in the field, that if it works in the programmer's mocked up environment it is ready for release? :-)
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god no, that sort of thinking got my current project into the state it is today (and sadly, no-one thought to warn me before i was in to deep)
If whoever did this has enough info to know exactly what kind of equipment the iranis have, they probably know which valves are used and how to actuate them properly, they also probably know what kind of reactor design it is, and how to sabotage it.
Else, they wouldnt just need the valves for their mockup test, but a complete running reactor, and the only succesfull sy
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I estimate a budget of one million dollar to create this thing
[citation needed]
If I were to pull a number out of my ass on what it would take to create any virus-like program, I would set the budget at:
(1) extremely dedicated individual with internet access and some time on his/her hands.
The information required for attacking practically anything is available online. Yes, looking for the information might raise some red flags, and accessing it could most certainly do so, but if the person perpetrating said attack is clever and careful (and maybe lucky, as well), there
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You forget the money required to find out the actual sequence of commands that would do actual damage in an actual real-world plant. That could be very, very expensive for someone living halfway around the world from the intended target or it could cost nothing for, say, a technician at Natanz.
Re:Obviously it was the Italians... (Score:2)
I mean Stux is a variety of linux from Italy:
http://gpstudio.com/ [gpstudio.com]
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finger pointing without proof (Score:2)
Austin Powers' father.
More details needed in story summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the numerous slashdot articles and buzz about it, I'm seeing scant actual details.
How was it delivered? Via Internet? Botnet? Unknown at this time? According to the article it "can spread using several vectors."
It also says 2 of the 4 zero-day vulnerabilities have been patched by MS.
The article about a possible attack scenario leads more credibility to the claim that there had to be inside help. You need people on the inside for Reconnaissance and deployment. Even if it was spread from the internet, someone had to get ahold of the security certificates to crack them and know the specific types of PLCs in use. The arrests [slashdot.org] that recently took place in Iran are making a lot more sense, despite all the knee-jerk condemnation from the /. posters.
Re:More details needed in story summary (Score:4, Informative)
Speculation/rumor is that the attack vector was USB drives used by Russian contractors. That is also it's primary method of spread, but it may be able to spread over networks as well (reports that I've seen seem contradictory on that one). Further speculation/rumor has it that a possible "nuclear accident" at Iran's centrifuge facility last year may have been caused by this worm, if that is the case it is the only report of actual hardware being damaged that I've heard of and would 100% support the idea that the worm was targeted at Iran's nuclear facilities. Given the number of infections in Iran and the artificial three hop limit that the worm's writers gave it, it would seem the attack originated there.
I think it's likely that the writers never planned on having the worm escape the target's network, I'm guessing someone at the nuke facility broke security protocol and took home a thumb drive that they weren't supposed to and it spread from there. The worm doesn't do much except take up cycles on systems that don't match the fingerprint that it is looking for, a fingerprint only makes sense if you're looking to take down a lot of identical systems, which lines up nicely with the centrifuge theory. Basically, it's highly likely that this was a government job, targeting Iran's centrifuges, done with inside knowledge of what systems they were using, and delivered using some pretty basic social engineering (leaving infected USB drives on the ground in the parking lot for instance).
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Somehow this reminds me of grey-goo or tailored virus attacks out of science fiction - and just as well targeted. After all, the "story" happens once things go awry, not while they're working as expected.
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You have a USB device talking to Microsoft connecting to Siemens "something" then to some industrial system that has to work really well 24/7 and or to exact tolerances.
Microsoft is the way in, at it seem to be looking for something, like a key and a lock.
When it finds a match, interesting a 'new' things may happen over time to some industrial system.
Phone home and uninstaller seem to be part of
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> Despite the numerous slashdot articles and buzz about it, I'm seeing scant actual details.
That's probably because you're not getting your news at the right place. Here's the detailed technical analysis released last week:
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf [symantec.com]
It's quite an impressive read.
only question (Score:2)
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IIRC, the name has been discovered somewhere in worm's files. Can't find the link though.
Any one has more details on the plc payload ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Target is still speculation (Score:3, Interesting)
This attack is aimed at a very specific PLC configuration, and does nothing unless it finds that configuration. Until someone who has the matching PLC configuration admits it, speculation as to the target remains speculation.
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Wouldn't Siemens be able to tell (based on the commands sent to the PLC by the Stuxnet worm) what it is trying to do?
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Not necessarily. The "P" in PLC stands for programmable. PLCs have a large amount of generic physical I/O (relay outputs, 4-20mA inputs, etc etc). From looking at the Stuxnet code, you *might* be able to tell that a particular output is being turned on - but without knowing what's wired into that output, you still haven't learned much. And that's a fairly blatant scenario (where Stuxnet is directly controlling PLC I/O),
If Stuxnet is doing something more subtle, it could be doing something like patching the
World-wide distribution (Score:3, Informative)
Dutch multinationals have revealed that the worm is also attacking them.
The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] has a table of purported number of infections in various countries. Indonesia and India have the worst problem after Iran. Over six thousand in the Anglophone countries. If this is in fact only spreading via USB sticks, we've got some really promiscuous behavior going on.
(You may well be skeptical of the six million reported for China. It's not a defacement; there's a link to an article that quotes someone actually making the claim. But the quote makes it sound like the speaker doesn't know what he's talking about.)
Also by network shares (Score:2, Informative)
It also spreads through network shares, so once inside it can quickly get around. Still, F-Secure has a nice Q&A bit up on StuxNet + demo vid.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002040.html [f-secure.com]
The US (Score:2)
I doubt the US had anything to do with it, we have a administration with "no bag" in office. Isreal on the other hand would be my first suspect. I can only hope that part of the stimulus money made it to a worthy cause such as this.
Re: The US (Score:2)
I doubt the US had anything to do with it, we have a administration with "no bag" in office.
The US intelligence agencies have a long history of doing things without getting clearance from the White House.
Re: The US (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. The intelligence agencies never do anything without implicit authorization from the White House. They just sometimes find plausible deniability convenient. Occasionally they find it necessary to drive out a scapegoat.
I hope it's the Daemon... (Score:2)
I hope this is The Daemon [thedaemon.com] spreading. :)
Siemens Stuxnet support / advisory page (Score:2)
Why isn't Siemens being taken to task here? (Score:2)
Before Stuxnet, I'm sure the general public had no idea that Siemens was selling technology to Iran to fulfill its nuclear ambitions. Given that the west has a lot of misgivings about letting Iran do so, shouldn't western companies be a little more careful who they sell nuclear reactor parts to? I don't necessarily want to compare them to IBM's role in selling computers to the Nazis, but is there some point where you take some corporate responsibility before profits?
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Iran knows how to buy things through complicated webs of shell companies in order to hide the final destination.
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My guess, is that the tech was sold to Russian contractors who then sold and installed the tech for Iran.
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A lot of technology falls under the multi-purpose loop holes. A PLC is a standard industrial component. It is a "programmable logic controller". It simply activates machinery and coordinates activities in industrial machinery. The PLC doesn't know if it is opening a valve that is dumping gas into a centrifuge, or water into a sanitation system.
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Siemens is on record as stating they have never sold equipment to Iran and presumes they got it through third parties.
correction TFA (Score:2)
"Almost all SCADA systems are -- for safety reasons -- standalone: not connected to a network, let alone the Internet."
should actually read:
"In theory, almost all SCADA systems are -- for safety reasons -- standalone: not connected to a network, let alone the Internet."
Intriguing. (Score:3, Informative)
Those marking me "troll" for having said earlier that other, definitely and unquestionably innocent, victims could happen, and then marked me "troll" for noting that the protections against such accidents didn't mean they wouldn't happen anyway, will doubtless ignore the fact that the Dutch are (a) not Iranian nuclear weapons scientists, and (b) that the only Iranian victims so far have been moderates who might have kept the program somewhat sane have now been arrested as spies. Iran is not known for treating those they suspect of spying very nicely.
It is indeed unclear who the worm was aimed at, but I'm confident that it wasn't the Dutch and I'm now more certain than ever that other innocent victims will turn up. We have proof now that the safeguards (however well-intentioned) did not work. Which is no great surprise - it's hard to have a failsafe weapon as there are so few scenarios in which you need a weapon that badly and have it be safe if it fails.
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Interesting. I tell you "I am a victim" so therefore I could not have written the virus. Hmm... (Just interesting, definitely not informative or insightful -- pre-meta-modding.)
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I did not say the Dutch did not write the virus, I said I was confident they weren't the target of it. Veeeery different things. If you want to critique my views, that's great and I learn a lot from people doing so. But it isn't terribly useful when you don't first read what it is you critique.
Obligatory William Gibson (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone had reprogrammed the DNA synthesizer, he said. The thing was there for the overnight construction of just the right macromolecule. With its in-built computer and its custom software. Expensive, Sandii. But not as expensive as you turned out to be for Hosaka.
I hope you got a good price from Maas.
The diskette in my hand. Rain on the river. I knew, but I couldn't face it. I put the code for that meningial virus back into your purse and lay down beside you.
So Moenner died, along with other Hosaka researchers. Including Hiroshi. Chedanne suffered permanent brain damage.
Hiroshi hadn't worried about contamination. The proteins he punched for were harmless. So the synthesizer hummed to itself all night long building a virus to the specifications of Maas Biolabs GmbH. Maas. Small, fast, ruthless -- All Edge.
New Rose Hotel, 1981.
Wonder if we'll ever find out what Stuxnet did in 2010, and if it did what its designers hoped.
Stuxnet Sux or Stuxnet Success Story? (Score:2)
Occam's Razor theory (Score:2)
Has anyone actually seen physical evidence that Stuxnet was present on one of the Iranian nuclear power computers?
Or is it possible that their nuclear program has serious problems and they decided to create some propaganda to shift the blame to their arch-enemies?
I personally wouldn't take the chance that it was the latter case. As a matter of history, the Soviet Union was far less advanced than originally thought but it took a surge in Cold War activities to find out.
If there is a third world war, IMHO it
We may never know? We DO know! (Score:5, Funny)
I for one feel it's safe to assume Iran is right, that this is a nefarious plot by unnamed western nations to stop Iran's glorious peaceful nuclear power program, but that absolutely no computers controlling the nuclear program were infected. After all, Iran is completely trustworthy and it's nuclear scientists are smart enough not to use control computers to check their e-mail and click on random links from random people.
I'm also going to assume that fake first post was part of a nefarious plot by unnamed western nations to tarnish Iran's glorious image as first posters.
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Oh geez. Iran is the same nation where beheadings are common (as is cousin and even double-cousin marriage), women have to be kept in beekeeper outfits for fear some Iranian neanderthal male will see an ankle and go on a rampage of rape and destruction...
Yes, we know, you hate Iran and Iranians, but don't you get sick of posting the same troll again and again on every article that has to do with Iran? You knew parent's post was tongue-in-cheek, but you still took the time to make it known how much you hate Iran before going "oh, it was tongue-in-cheek" ha ha ha. So clever.
This is what Iran looked like in the 1970s [pagef30.com] before the revolution -- none of these people were "neanderthals". It's not the people who want their women to dress up in "beekeper outfits", it
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I had a friend who would respond to the knee-jerk attacks about Iran by showing his vacation pictures. My favorites were from the ski resort outside Tehran. It's really amusing, because nobody expects to see *really good alpine skiing* in Iran, let alone pictures of Iranian ski bunnies. This stuff isn't supposed to exist, in their world where all of the Middle East is a barren wasteland...
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I win!!!
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Organized crime types have used computer viruses to blackmail business before. Instead of simply threatening to wipe out computer data, Stuxnet could actually stop production at a factory. Not sure why this would be any different.
Because the target is a government not a business. Businesses don't have the resources to fight organized crime, governments do. Like many predators organized crime would pick a target that is least able to defend themselves.