Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

Gurta · 2011-01-16T15:02:19+00:00

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID E. SANGER Published: January 15, 2011 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran toured the Natanz plant in 2008. The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israels never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal. Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Irans efforts to make a bomb of its own. Behind Dimonas barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Irans at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Irans nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehrans ability to make its first nuclear arms. To check out the worm, you have to know the machines, said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out. Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American- Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program. In recent days, the retiring chief of Israels Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Irans efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Irans ability to buy components and do business around the world. The gruff Mr. Dagan, whose organization has been accused by Iran of being behind the deaths of several Iranian scientists, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could delay a bomb until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from Israels long-held argument that Iran was on the cusp of success. The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed. In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex and ingenious than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009. Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence. In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Irans enrichment facilities. Seimens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for Americas nuclear arms the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet. The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Irans nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart. The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Irans operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults. Its like a playbook, said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it. Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable. Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it. source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=1

Thread starter Gurta
Start date Jan 16, 2011

Gurta

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Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

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