Pundits and policy wonks have long wondered how long Israel will forbear to swat at Iran, if it believes that 1) its existential nemesis is secretly weaponizing its nuclear capability and, 2) the US declines to act.
If this former spook is correct, the battle may already be on:
The opening salvo came in the form of a cyber attack against Iranian industrial and nuclear sites, using the Stuxnet worm, described as “the most sophisticated malware ever…”
While the origin of the worm has not been confirmed, Israel has been pegged as a likely suspect. Israeli defense forces and intelligence services have robust cyber-warfare capabilities, and Stuxnet could prove an excellent tool for crippling key Iranian facilities, including the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, which was recently fueled with Russian assistance.
And, it wouldn’t be the first time Israel has used a computer network attack against one of its foes. Just after midnight local time on 6 September 2007, IAF jets destroyed a suspected nuclear facility deep inside Syria. Air defense assets never responded to the Israeli raid, raising suspicions that Syrian radar and missile sites were disabled prior to the air strike with a cyber attack.
A “war without borders” indeed.
Hmm…
Let slip the viruses of war?
FRom what I’ve read the worm is written to go after one certain Siemens controller. Siemens supplied quite a bit of hardware for the Iranian Nuke plant at Busehr (sp?). I’m guessing the Israelis (who are quite adept at this sort of thing – many of Intel’s products have been designed in Israel) are trying an end run around the risks of sending their people in to kill the Iranian nuke. If that’s the case, I wish them the best.
If I were a commander, I would rather send a cyber bug rather than risk my guys. Save the hardware and pilots for other things.
There is the line of thought that somebody is actually after SIEMENS–which would explain the cyber-attacks in Indonesia as well where Sieman’s has supplied the Indonesian Govt and industry with mucho industrial controls and is seen as logical, as that company has a long history of willingly aiding totalitarian regimes beginning with the Nazis.
More power to them but I hope the Law of Unintended Consequences doesn’t jump out and bite someone (us) that wasn’t meant to get bit.
VX
I bought a division from Siemens years ago and negotiating with those SOBs convinced me never to purchase another Siemens product. We had to use their PLC code in our product since their PLCs virtually run every major water treatment plant in the US, but we also strongly suggested alternatives like Opto 22 or Allen-Bradley. The one good thing that came out of it all was every time we concluded a session they presented a nice bottle of Bombay Sapphire as a departing gift. And yes, they would sell their Mother’s soul to Satan’s wh0rehouse.
I remember where I saw the Siemens-as-tgt, G-man. It was over at Ghost of a Flea (linked here) under the 28 Sept heading. Art. also points out that, among other things, according to files released last Thurs by MI5, Siemens was used before and during WWII as cover for Nazi spying, besides providing electrical power to Auschwitz and using death camp slave labor (and trying to trade-mark *Zyklon B* LOL) And it’s currently in violation of UN sanctions and int. law by shipping nuke parts to Iran despite UN sanctioned embargo.
IIRC, IG Farben manufactured Zyklon B. I wouldn’t be surprised if Siemans tried to steal, however.
We are using some Siemens controllers at the Cherokee Drinking water plant. I’m not sure which part of the process they control as that wasn’t my project.
Cyberweapons by themselves will not be able to deal a final fatal blow in a conflict, just as radio by itself does not.
But it is one holy-mother-of-jeebus of a force multiplier. Just like radio.
Anything that gets the enemy closer to naked & defenseless makes the real fight that much easier.
And many of us read it here first.
You scooped many, but do you not regularly do so?
Oh, vurrah glad my clients are using Mitsubishi PLCs.
There’s a very nice piece of analysis here. Simon has been drilling down to discover a deeper level of detail.
Er, sorry about alliteration.
Funny thing is, this reminds me of the first chapter of Red Storm Rising. Just replace moles with engineering skills with a worm.
I wonder if they could go after Iran’s refineries in a similar fashion, without putting those in the rest of the world (Israel needs gasoline, too) at risk. Iran has enough of a refined fuel shortage already as it is…
If such a thing could work, “Without a shot being fired”? It would be “A Good Thing” (thanks Martha Stewart)!
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Indonesian, etc. shutdowns are by-effects of what I recall as a standard German practice.
I met the practice in terms of quality — the vendor we represented tested their stuff before it left the factory, and the good ones came to the US and Western Europe; the ones that failed QC went to Africa, South America, and similar places.
Siemens would be highly likely to build more than was needed for any given contract, especially if they were customized. When the contract was fulfilled there would be leftovers, and those would be sold off piecemeal where possible, especially to less-sophisticated markets unlikely to detect that they’d gotten goods that weren’t precisely as advertised. It would appear that the worm targets a few specific instructions of the customized ones that go to the Iranian facilities. When the extras got sold off elsewhere, they too would be worm food.
Regards,
Ric