Iran under cyber attack?

[anonymous-user]

Marf said:

Opulent said:

bob1179 said:

However, you could cause some real damage to an operating plant with very little effort once you are inside the control system.

Physical damage? Are they actually talking about trying to physically blow up a power station/facility, over a computer network? Is that likely, or even possible?

If the PLCs are attached to say cooling systems, or other safety critical parts of a power station then feasibly yes, physical damage could arise.

I guess. Scary stuff in that respect, I would guess another Chernobyl could be within the realms of possibility then?

[Frankeh]

Opulent said:

bob1179 said:

However, you could cause some real damage to an operating plant with very little effort once you are inside the control system.

Physical damage? Are they actually talking about trying to physically blow up a power station/facility, over a computer network? Is that likely, or even possible?

If there's one thing I learned from Die Hard 4.0 it's that everything can be blown up if it's connected to a computer.

[bob1179]

Opulent said:

Marf said:

Opulent said:

bob1179 said:

However, you could cause some real damage to an operating plant with very little effort once you are inside the control system.

Physical damage? Are they actually talking about trying to physically blow up a power station/facility, over a computer network? Is that likely, or even possible?

If the PLCs are attached to say cooling systems, or other safety critical parts of a power station then feasibly yes, physical damage could arise.

I guess. Scary stuff in that respect, I would guess another Chernobyl could be within the realms of possibility then?

Just by not opening or closing a few valves on a boiler at the correct time you could quite easily cause a plant trip or some more serious damage. A plant operator basically monitors the screens in the control room and the shift from manual control to almost automatic start up, running and shut down of a plant has occured at a momumental rate.

The reason for this is that operators cost money and make mistakes.



Edited to add: I don't work in the nuclear industry, but I expect another Chernobyl would be massivley unlikely. The amount of fail safe systems built into a nuclear plant would render a runaway reactor a virtual impossibilty, even if the computers that controlled the systems had been 'infected'.

Edited by bob1179 on Monday 27th September 14:46

[Silent1]

Guam said:

Marf said:

petemurphy said:

Marf said:

petemurphy said:

does iran etc use windows - always wondered if msoft put in back doors etc for the gov

why would that be so hard to imagine?

Nothing is hard to imagine. Being a reality is another matter entirely.

Besides, you don't need back doors to comprimise a windows system, especially when your ultimate target is an integrated control system which will not run on windows.

On the subject of reality the US government has previous they forced the makers of PGP (pretty good privacy) back in the day to include a backdoor under threat of Jail under weapons export legislation (well known in geek Circles) which is why Version 5 is the only truly secure version

I'll put it to you on good knowledge that the current versions of PGP don't suffer that.
the 'backdoor' you're referring to requires a pretty niche set of circumstances and only applies to who disk encryption whereby it's booted the password is stored and then the disc is removed without the computer being powered off whilst the automated reboot function is active.

Fairly unlikely really.

Edited by Silent1 on Tuesday 28th September 04:02

[Marf]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11795076

[996c2]

petemurphy said:

cool def usa or israel!

think we will see more of this sort of thing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018

Just an update on this story.

I am surprised this is not held up as an example as the perfect smart bomb. The US/Israel has achieved their military objective without any deaths - it's not often that you can say that. Long may it continue.

Hope we are taking appropriate steps to ensure terrorists do not manage to do something similar with our power/ transport/ critical systems.

[Marf]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirm...

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it
Stuxnet was never meant to propagate in the wild.

[hairykrishna]

Marf said:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirm...

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it
Stuxnet was never meant to propagate in the wild.

For a given value of 'confirmed'. The NYT article is slightly suspect to me, there are no named sources and the journalist concerned is flogging his new book about 'secret wars'.

[Marf]

hairykrishna said:

Marf said:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirm...

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it
Stuxnet was never meant to propagate in the wild.

For a given value of 'confirmed'. The NYT article is slightly suspect to me, there are no named sources and the journalist concerned is flogging his new book about 'secret wars'.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/stuxnet_joint_us_israeli_op/

General James E Cartwright, head of a small cyberoperation inside the United States Strategic Command, developed the plan to create Stuxnet. The first stage involved planting code that extracted maps of the air-gapped computer networks that supported nuclear labs and reprocessing plants in Iran.

[eldar]

hairykrishna said:

For a given value of 'confirmed'. The NYT article is slightly suspect to me, there are no named sources and the journalist concerned is flogging his new book about 'secret wars'.

Israel is certainly in the frame, but proof is lacking. US involvement, who knows?

[hairykrishna]

Marf said:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/stuxnet_jo...

General James E Cartwright, head of a small cyberoperation inside the United States Strategic Command, developed the plan to create Stuxnet. The first stage involved planting code that extracted maps of the air-gapped computer networks that supported nuclear labs and reprocessing plants in Iran.

Yes, thank you. That's another article linking to the same NYT source.

Edit to say - I don't necessarily disbelieve it but claiming it's confirmed based on one persons unsubstantiated article/book seems a step too far to me.

Edited by hairykrishna on Friday 1st June 18:53

[Marf]

Fair enough.

[just me]

Latest campaign is supposedly called "Olympic Games"

http://gizmodo.com/5914846/obama-ordered-devastati...

[Marf]

"Flame and Stuxnet makers 'co-operated' on code"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18393985

[Jimbeaux]

Several topics, this one included, are this week's hot news as apparently, someone at the White House has leaked classified information to the NYT in an apparent attempt to show things the Obama team is doing so as to garner favor. Washinton is abuzz.

[Marf]

Jimbeaux said:

Several topics, this one included, are this week's hot news as apparently, someone at the White House has leaked classified information to the NYT in an apparent attempt to show things the Obama team is doing so as to garner favor. Washinton is abuzz.

Is this leak over and above what's being discussed in the book that apparently confirms America's involvement in these viruses? There was an NYT article last week which gave a synopses of the book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Confront-Conceal-Obamas-Su...

[Jimbeaux]

Marf said:

Jimbeaux said:

Several topics, this one included, are this week's hot news as apparently, someone at the White House has leaked classified information to the NYT in an apparent attempt to show things the Obama team is doing so as to garner favor. Washinton is abuzz.

Is this leak over and above what's being discussed in the book that apparently confirms America's involvement in these viruses? There was an NYT article last week which gave a synopses of the book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Confront-Conceal-Obamas-Su...

There are a few ongoing issues involving the NYT. The White House confirms leaks but claims it is not them.

[stevejh]

Someone in The Whitehouse seems to be leaking information in order to 'big' themselves up. It could have been even worse if it was an election year - oh, hang on ....

[Countdown]

A very clever play whoever it is. Plausible deniability whilst the Iranians chase shadows.