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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Stuxnet has set Iran back by two years

According to a German computer security expert, the Stuxnet worm has set Iran's nuclear program back by two years (Hat Tip: Allahpundit via Twitter).
“It will take two years for Iran to get back on track,” Langer said in a telephone interview from his office in Hamburg, Germany. “This was nearly as effective as a military strike, but even better since there are no fatalities and no full-blown war. From a military perspective, this was a huge success.”

Langer spoke to the Post amid news reports that the virus was still infecting Iran’s computer systems at its main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and its reactor at Bushehr.

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According to Langer, Iran’s best move would be to throw out all of the computers that have been infected by the worm, which he said was the most “advanced and aggressive malware in history.” But, he said, even once all of the computers were thrown out, Iran would have to ensure that computers used by outside contractors were also clean of Stuxnet.

“It is extremely difficult to clean up installations from Stuxnet, and we know that Iran is no good in IT [information technology] security, and they are just beginning to learn what this all means,” he said. “Just to get their systems running again they have to get rid of the virus, and this will take time, and then they need to replace the equipment, and they have to rebuild the centrifuges at Natanz and possibly buy a new turbine for Bushehr.”

Widespread speculation has named Israel’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200, known for its advanced Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities, as the possible creator of the software, as well as the United States.

Langer said that in his opinion at least two countries – possibly Israel and the United States – were behind Stuxnet.

Israel has traditionally declined comment on its suspected involvement in the Stuxnet virus, but senior IDF officers recently confirmed that Iran had encountered significant technological difficulties with its centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.

“We can say that it must have taken several years to develop, and we arrived at this conclusion through code analysis, since the code on the control systems is 15,000 lines of code, and this is a huge amount,” Langer said.

“This piece of evidence led us to conclude that this is not by a hacker,” he continued. “It had to be a country, and we can also conclude that even one nation-state would not have been able to do this on its own.”
Read the whole thing.

Hopefully this is long enough for a regime change in the US which will bring a President with... you know what.... Heh.

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3 Comments:

At 5:59 PM, Blogger Captain.H said...

Besides having, um, brass equipment, he needs, just for starters, to not have an anti-Israel, anti-America attitude. Assuming a future era of more enlightenment and rationality vs. today's liberalism and PC, historians will marvel that Americans allowed themselves to be saddled with Barack Hussein Obama, IMO the worst president in American history. Jimmy Carter has lost that title and now has to be content with the consolation prize, worst president of the 20th Century.

(It's incredible but those two schlemiels even make Bill Clinton look good. I'd better stop my comment now. Thinking about BO and JC normally puts me in windbag-rant mode, not good for my blood pressure.)

 
At 6:38 PM, Blogger Sunlight said...

Only two years? Until Phase 2! Bwahahahaha!

 
At 8:54 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Iran is nevertheless on line to conclude an agreement with the P5+1 or whatever to swop a portion of its low-enriched uranium plus some of its 20 percent stock in exchange for Western cooperation with nuclear infrastructure and right to continue enrichment. Presumably the numerous evasions of IAEA controls enabling dual track efforts towards militarization would be tolerated to a lessor or greater degree plus Iran's drive for hegemony would be indirectly legitimized and Israel pressured never ever ever to mount military operations (if it wanted to which isn't clear). So it looks like Iran has that 2 years make up time.

 

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