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Wikipedia

Stuxnet

February 15, 2024

Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran.[2] Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, multiple independent news organizations recognize Stuxnet to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games.[3][4][5] The program, started during the Bush administration, was rapidly expanded within the first months of Barack Obama's presidency.[6]

Stuxnet
Technical nameAs Stuxnet
Worm:Win32/Stuxnet.[Letter]
TrojanDropper:Win32/Stuxnet
W32.Stuxnet
W32.Stuxnet!lnk
Troj/Stuxnet-[Letter]
Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Stuxnet.[Letter]
Worm.Win32.Stuxnet.[Letter]
TR/Drop.Stuxnet.[Letter].[Number]
Worm.Win32.Stuxnet
Trojan-Dropper:W32/Stuxnet
Rootkit:W32/Stuxnet
RTKT_STUXNET.[Letter]
LNK_STUXNET.[Letter]
WORM_STUXNET.[Letter]
ClassificationComputer worm
TypeDropper
Author(s)Equation Group
Operating system(s) affected
Source:[1]

Stuxnet specifically targets programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery and industrial processes including gas centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Exploiting four zero-day flaws,[7] Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software. Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs, collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast-spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart.[2] Stuxnet's design and architecture are not domain-specific and it could be tailored as a platform for attacking modern SCADA and PLC systems (e.g., in factory assembly lines or power plants), most of which are in Europe, Japan, and the United States.[8] Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.[9] Targeting industrial control systems, the worm infected over 200,000 computers and caused 1,000 machines to physically degrade.[10]

Stuxnet has three modules: a worm that executes all routines related to the main payload of the attack; a link file that automatically executes the propagated copies of the worm; and a rootkit component responsible for hiding all malicious files and processes, to prevent detection of Stuxnet.[11] It is typically introduced to the target environment via an infected USB flash drive, thus crossing any air gap. The worm then propagates across the network, scanning for Siemens Step7 software on computers controlling a PLC. In the absence of either criterion, Stuxnet becomes dormant inside the computer. If both the conditions are fulfilled, Stuxnet introduces the infected rootkit onto the PLC and Step7 software, modifying the code and giving unexpected commands to the PLC while returning a loop of normal operation system values back to the users.[12][13]

Discovery edit

Stuxnet, discovered by Sergey Ulasen from a Belarusian antivirus company VirusBlokAda, initially spread via Microsoft Windows, and targeted Siemens industrial control systems. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems,[14] nor the first publicly known intentional act of cyberwarfare to be implemented, it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems,[15] and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.[16][17]

The worm initially spreads indiscriminately, but includes a highly specialized malware payload that is designed to target only Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that are configured to control and monitor specific industrial processes.[18][19] Stuxnet infects PLCs by subverting the Step-7 software application that is used to reprogram these devices.[20][21]

Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations,[22] with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran;[21][23][24] Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60 percent of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran.[25] Siemens stated that the worm caused no damage to its customers,[15] but the Iran nuclear program, which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured secretly, was damaged by Stuxnet.[26][27][28] Kaspersky Lab concluded that the sophisticated attack could only have been conducted "with nation-state support."[29] F-Secure's chief researcher Mikko Hyppönen, when asked if possible nation-state support were involved, agreed: "That's what it would look like, yes."[30]

In May 2011, the PBS program Need To Know cited a statement by Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, in which he said, "we're glad they [the Iranians] are having trouble with their centrifuge machine and that we — the U.S. and its allies — are doing everything we can to make sure that we complicate matters for them," offering "winking acknowledgement" of United States involvement in Stuxnet.[31] According to The Daily Telegraph, a showreel that was played at a retirement party for the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gabi Ashkenazi, included references to Stuxnet as one of his operational successes as the IDF chief of staff.[32]

On 1 June 2012, an article in The New York Times reported that Stuxnet was part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games, devised by the NSA under President George W. Bush and executed under President Barack Obama.[33]

On 24 July 2012, an article by Chris Matyszczyk from CNET[34] reported that the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran e-mailed F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hyppönen to report a new instance of malware.

On 25 December 2012, an Iranian semi-official news agency announced there was a cyberattack by Stuxnet, this time on the industries in the southern area of the country. The malware targeted a power plant and some other industries in Hormozgan province in recent months.[35]

According to Eugene Kaspersky, the worm also infected a nuclear power plant in Russia. Kaspersky noted, however, that since the power plant is not connected to the public Internet, the system should remain safe.[36]

History edit

The worm was first identified by the security company VirusBlokAda in mid-June 2010.[20] Journalist Brian Krebs's blog posting on 15 July 2010 was the first widely read report on the worm.[37][38] The original name given by VirusBlokAda was "Rootkit.Tmphider;"[39] Symantec, however, called it "W32.Temphid," later changing to "W32.Stuxnet."[40] Its current name is derived from a combination of some keywords in the software (".stub" and "mrxnet.sys").[41][42] The reason for the discovery at this time is attributed to the virus accidentally spreading beyond its intended target (the Natanz plant) due to a programming error introduced in an update; this led to the worm spreading to an engineer's computer that had been connected to the centrifuges and spreading further when the engineer returned home and connected his computer to the internet.[33]

Kaspersky Lab experts at first estimated that Stuxnet started spreading around March or April 2010,[43] but the first variant of the worm appeared in June 2009.[20] On 15 July 2010, the day the worm's existence became widely known, a distributed denial-of-service attack was made on the servers for two leading mailing lists on industrial-systems security. This attack, from an unknown source but likely related to Stuxnet, disabled one of the lists, thereby interrupting an important source of information for power plants and factories.[38] On the other hand, researchers at Symantec have uncovered a version of the Stuxnet computer virus that was used to attack Iran's nuclear program in November 2007, being developed as early as 2005, when Iran was still setting up its uranium enrichment facility.[44]

The second variant, with substantial improvements, appeared in March 2010, apparently because its authors believed that Stuxnet was not spreading fast enough; a third, with minor improvements, appeared in April 2010.[38] The worm contains a component with a build timestamp from 3 February 2010.[45] In the United Kingdom on 25 November 2010, Sky News reported that it had received information from an anonymous source at an unidentified IT security organization that Stuxnet, or a variation of the worm, had been traded on the black market.[46]

In 2015, Kaspersky Lab noted that the Equation Group had used two of the same zero-day attacks prior to their use in Stuxnet, in another malware called fanny.bmp.[47][48] and commented that "the similar type of usage of both exploits together in different computer worms, at around the same time, indicates that the Equation Group and the Stuxnet developers are either the same or working closely together".[49]

In 2019, Chronicle researchers Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade and Silas Cutler presented evidence of at least four distinct threat actor malware platforms collaborating to create the different versions of Stuxnet.[50][51] The collaboration was dubbed 'GOSSIP GIRL' after a threat group leaked from classified CSE slides that included Flame.[52] GOSSIP GIRL is a cooperative umbrella that includes the Equation Group, Flame, Duqu, and Flowershop (also known as 'Cheshire Cat').[53][54][55]

In 2020, researcher Facundo Muñoz found evidence suggesting that Equation Group collaborated with Stuxnet developers in 2009 by lending them at least one zero-day exploit,[56] and one exploit from 2008[57] that was being actively used in-the-wild by the Conficker computer worm and Chinese hackers.[58] In 2017, a group of hackers known as The Shadow Brokers leaked a massive trove of tools belonging to Equation Group, including new versions of both exploits compiled in 2010, showing significant code overlaps as both Stuxnet's exploits and Equation Group's exploits were developed using a set of libraries called "Exploit Development Framework" also leaked by The Shadow Brokers.

Affected countries edit

A study of the spread of Stuxnet by Symantec showed that the main affected countries in the early days of the infection were Iran, Indonesia and India:[59]

Country Share of infected computers
Iran 58.9%
Indonesia 18.2%
India 8.3%
Azerbaijan 2.6%
United States 1.6%
Pakistan 1.3%
Other countries 9.2%

Iran was reported to have fortified its cyberwar abilities following the Stuxnet attack, and has been suspected of retaliatory attacks against United States banks in Operation Ababil.[60]

Operation edit

Unlike most malware, Stuxnet does little harm to computers and networks that do not meet specific configuration requirements; "The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit ... It was a marksman's job."[61] While the worm is promiscuous, it makes itself inert if Siemens software is not found on infected computers, and contains safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to more than three others, and to erase itself on 24 June 2012.[38]

For its targets, Stuxnet contains, among other things, code for a man-in-the-middle attack that fakes industrial process control sensor signals so an infected system does not shut down due to detected abnormal behavior.[38][61][62] Such complexity is very unusual for malware. The worm consists of a layered attack against three different systems:

  1. The Windows operating system,
  2. Siemens PCS 7, WinCC and STEP7 industrial software applications that run on Windows and
  3. One or more Siemens S7 PLCs.

Windows infection edit

Stuxnet attacked Windows systems using an unprecedented four zero-day attacks (plus the CPLINK vulnerability and a vulnerability used by the Conficker worm[63]). It is initially spread using infected removable drives such as USB flash drives,[21][45] which contain Windows shortcut files to initiate executable code.[64] The worm then uses other exploits and techniques such as peer-to-peer remote procedure call (RPC) to infect and update other computers inside private networks that are not directly connected to the Internet.[65][66][67] The number of zero-day exploits used is unusual, as they are highly valued and malware creators do not typically make use of (and thus simultaneously make visible) four different zero-day exploits in the same worm.[23] Amongst these exploits were remote code execution on a computer with Printer Sharing enabled,[68] and the LNK/PIF vulnerability,[69] in which file execution is accomplished when an icon is viewed in Windows Explorer, negating the need for user interaction.[70] Stuxnet is unusually large at half a megabyte in size,[65] and written in several different programming languages (including C and C++) which is also irregular for malware.[15][20][62] The Windows component of the malware is promiscuous in that it spreads relatively quickly and indiscriminately.[45]

The malware has both user mode and kernel mode rootkit ability under Windows,[67] and its device drivers have been digitally signed with the private keys of two public key certificates that were stolen from separate well-known companies, JMicron and Realtek, both located at Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan.[45][65] The driver signing helped it install kernel mode rootkit drivers successfully without users being notified, and thus it remained undetected for a relatively long period of time.[71] Both compromised certificates have been revoked by Verisign.

Two websites in Denmark and Malaysia were configured as command and control servers for the malware, allowing it to be updated, and for industrial espionage to be conducted by uploading information. Both of these domain names have subsequently been redirected by their DNS service provider to Dynadot as part of a global effort to disable the malware.[67][38]

Step 7 software infection edit

 
Overview of normal communications between Step 7 and a Siemens PLC
 
Overview of Stuxnet hijacking communication between Step 7 software and a Siemens PLC

According to researcher Ralph Langner,[72][73] once installed on a Windows system, Stuxnet infects project files belonging to Siemens' WinCC/PCS 7 SCADA control software[74] (Step 7), and subverts a key communication library of WinCC called s7otbxdx.dll. Doing so intercepts communications between the WinCC software running under Windows and the target Siemens PLC devices, when the two are connected via a data cable. The malware is able to modify the code on PLC devices unnoticed, and subsequently to mask its presence from WinCC if the control software attempts to read an infected block of memory from the PLC system.[67]

The malware furthermore used a zero-day exploit in the WinCC/SCADA database software in the form of a hard-coded database password.[75]

PLC infection edit

 
Siemens Simatic S7-300 PLC CPU with three I/O modules attached

Stuxnet's payload targets only those SCADA configurations that meet criteria that it is programmed to identify.[38]

Stuxnet requires specific slave variable-frequency drives (frequency converter drives) to be attached to the targeted Siemens S7-300 system and its associated modules. It only attacks those PLC systems with variable-frequency drives from two specific vendors: Vacon based in Finland and Fararo Paya based in Iran.[76] Furthermore, it monitors the frequency of the attached motors, and only attacks systems that spin between 807 Hz and 1,210 Hz. This is a much higher frequency than motors typically operate at in most industrial applications, with the notable exception of gas centrifuges.[76] Stuxnet installs malware into memory block DB890 of the PLC that monitors the Profibus messaging bus of the system.[67] When certain criteria are met, it periodically modifies the frequency to 1,410 Hz and then to 2 Hz and then to 1,064 Hz, and thus affects the operation of the connected motors by changing their rotational speed.[76] It also installs a rootkit – the first such documented case on this platform – that hides the malware on the system and masks the changes in rotational speed from monitoring systems.

Removal edit

Siemens has released a detection and removal tool for Stuxnet. Siemens recommends contacting customer support if an infection is detected and advises installing Microsoft updates for security vulnerabilities and prohibiting the use of third-party USB flash drives.[77] Siemens also advises immediately upgrading password access codes.[78]

The worm's ability to reprogram external PLCs may complicate the removal procedure. Symantec's Liam O'Murchu warns that fixing Windows systems may not fully solve the infection; a thorough audit of PLCs may be necessary. Despite speculation that incorrect removal of the worm could cause damage,[15] Siemens reports that in the first four months since discovery, the malware was successfully removed from the systems of 22 customers without any adverse effects.[77][79]

Control system security edit

Main article: Control system security

Prevention of control system security incidents,[80] such as from viral infections like Stuxnet, is a topic that is being addressed in both the public and the private sector.

The US Department of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) operates the Control System Security Program (CSSP).[81] The program operates a specialized computer emergency response team called the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), conducts a biannual conference (ICSJWG), provides training, publishes recommended practices, and provides a self-assessment tool. As part of a Department of Homeland Security plan to improve American computer security, in 2008 it and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) worked with Siemens to identify security holes in the company's widely used Process Control System 7 (PCS 7) and its software Step 7. In July 2008, INL and Siemens publicly announced flaws in the control system at a Chicago conference; Stuxnet exploited these holes in 2009.[61]

Several industry organizations[82][83] and professional societies[84][85] have published standards and best practice guidelines providing direction and guidance for control system end-users on how to establish a control system security management program. The basic premise that all of these documents share is that prevention requires a multi-layered approach, often termed defense in depth.[86] The layers include policies and procedures, awareness and training, network segmentation, access control measures, physical security measures, system hardening, e.g., patch management, and system monitoring, anti-virus and intrusion prevention system (IPS). The standards and best practices[who?] also all[improper synthesis?] recommend starting with a risk analysis and a control system security assessment.[87][88]

Target and origin edit

Experts believe that Stuxnet required the largest and costliest development effort in malware history.[38] Developing its many abilities would have required a team of highly capable programmers, in-depth knowledge of industrial processes, and an interest in attacking industrial infrastructure.[15][20] Eric Byres, who has years of experience maintaining and troubleshooting Siemens systems, told Wired that writing the code would have taken many man-months, if not man-years.[65] Symantec estimates that the group developing Stuxnet would have consisted of between five and thirty people, and would have taken six months to prepare.[89][38] The Guardian, the BBC and The New York Times all claimed that (unnamed) experts studying Stuxnet believe the complexity of the code indicates that only a nation-state would have the abilities to produce it.[23][89][90] The self-destruct and other safeguards within the code implied that a Western government was responsible, or at least is responsible for its development.[38] However, software security expert Bruce Schneier initially condemned the 2010 news coverage of Stuxnet as hype, stating that it was almost entirely based on speculation.[91] But after subsequent research, Schneier stated in 2012 that "we can now conclusively link Stuxnet to the centrifuge structure at the Natanz nuclear enrichment lab in Iran".[92]

In January 2024, de Volkskrant reported that Dutch engineer Erik van Sabben was the saboteur who had infiltrated the underground nuclear complex in the city of Natanz and installed equipment infected with Stuxnet.[93]

Iran as a target edit

Ralph Langner, the researcher who identified that Stuxnet infected PLCs,[21] first speculated publicly in September 2010 that the malware was of Israeli origin, and that it targeted Iranian nuclear facilities.[94] However Langner more recently, at a TED conference, recorded in February 2011, stated that, "My opinion is that the Mossad is involved, but that the leading force is not Israel. The leading force behind Stuxnet is the cyber superpower – there is only one; and that's the United States."[95] Kevin Hogan, Senior Director of Security Response at Symantec, reported that most infected systems were in Iran (about 60%),[96] which has led to speculation that it may have been deliberately targeting "high-value infrastructure" in Iran[23] including either the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant or the Natanz nuclear facility.[65][97][98] Langner called the malware "a one-shot weapon" and said that the intended target was probably hit,[99] although he admitted this was speculation.[65] Another German researcher and spokesman of the German-based Chaos Computer Club, Frank Rieger, was the first to speculate that Natanz was the target.[38]

Natanz nuclear facilities edit

 
Anti-aircraft guns guarding Natanz Nuclear Facility

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in September 2010 experts on Iran and computer security specialists were increasingly convinced that Stuxnet was meant "to sabotage the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz – where the centrifuge operational capacity had dropped over the past year by 30 percent."[100] On 23 November 2010 it was announced that uranium enrichment at Natanz had ceased several times because of a series of major technical problems.[101] A "serious nuclear accident" (supposedly the shutdown of some of its centrifuges[102]) occurred at the site in the first half of 2009, which is speculated to have forced Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), to resign.[103] Statistics published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) show that the number of enrichment centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4,700 to about 3,900 beginning around the time the nuclear incident WikiLeaks mentioned would have occurred.[104] The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) suggests, in a report published in December 2010, that Stuxnet is a reasonable explanation for the apparent damage[105] at Natanz, and may have destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges (10 percent) sometime between November 2009 and late January 2010. The authors conclude:

The attacks seem designed to force a change in the centrifuge’s rotor speed, first raising the speed and then lowering it, likely with the intention of inducing excessive vibrations or distortions that would destroy the centrifuge. If its goal was to quickly destroy all the centrifuges in the FEP [Fuel Enrichment Plant], Stuxnet failed. But if the goal was to destroy a more limited number of centrifuges and set back Iran’s progress in operating the FEP, while making detection difficult, it may have succeeded, at least temporarily.[105]

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) report further notes that Iranian authorities have attempted to conceal the breakdown by installing new centrifuges on a large scale.[105][106]

The worm worked by first causing an infected Iranian IR-1 centrifuge to increase from its normal operating speed of 1,064 hertz to 1,410 hertz for 15 minutes before returning to its normal frequency. Twenty-seven days later, the worm went back into action, slowing the infected centrifuges down to a few hundred hertz for a full 50 minutes. The stresses from the excessive, then slower, speeds caused the aluminium centrifugal tubes to expand, often forcing parts of the centrifuges into sufficient contact with each other to destroy the machine.[107]

According to The Washington Post, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cameras installed in the Natanz facility recorded the sudden dismantling and removal of approximately 900–1,000 centrifuges during the time the Stuxnet worm was reportedly active at the plant. Iranian technicians, however, were able to quickly replace the centrifuges and the report concluded that uranium enrichment was likely only briefly disrupted.[108]

On 15 February 2011, the Institute for Science and International Security released a report concluding that:

Assuming Iran exercises caution, Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the Natanz plant. Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems. To prevent re-infection, Iran will have to exercise special caution since so many computers in Iran contain Stuxnet. Although Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy centrifuges at the Natanz facility, destruction was by no means total. Moreover, Stuxnet did not lower the production of low enriched uranium (LEU) during 2010. LEU quantities could have certainly been greater, and Stuxnet could be an important part of the reason why they did not increase significantly. Nonetheless, there remain important questions about why Stuxnet destroyed only 1,000 centrifuges. One observation is that it may be harder to destroy centrifuges by use of cyber attacks than often believed.[109]

Iranian reaction edit

The Associated Press reported that the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency released a statement on 24 September 2010 stating that experts from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran met in the previous week to discuss how Stuxnet could be removed from their systems.[19] According to analysts, such as David Albright, Western intelligence agencies had been attempting to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program for some time.[110][111]

The head of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant told Reuters that only the personal computers of staff at the plant had been infected by Stuxnet and the state-run newspaper Iran Daily quoted Reza Taghipour, Iran's telecommunications minister, as saying that it had not caused "serious damage to government systems".[90] The Director of Information Technology Council at the Iranian Ministry of Industries and Mines, Mahmud Liaii, has said that: "An electronic war has been launched against Iran... This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to locations outside Iran."[112]

In response to the infection, Iran assembled a team to combat it. With more than 30,000 IP addresses affected in Iran, an official said that the infection was fast spreading in Iran and the problem had been compounded by the ability of Stuxnet to mutate. Iran had set up its own systems to clean up infections and had advised against using the Siemens SCADA antivirus since it is suspected that the antivirus contains embedded code which updates Stuxnet instead of removing it.[113][114][115][116]

According to Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's government Information Technology Company, "The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading." He reported that his company had begun the cleanup process at Iran's "sensitive centres and organizations."[114] "We had anticipated that we could root out the virus within one to two months, but the virus is not stable, and since we started the cleanup process three new versions of it have been spreading", he told the Islamic Republic News Agency on 27 September 2010.[116]

On 29 November 2010, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated for the first time that a computer virus had caused problems with the controller handling the centrifuges at its Natanz facilities. According to Reuters, he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran, "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts."[117][118]

On the same day two Iranian nuclear scientists were targeted in separate, but nearly simultaneous car bomb attacks near Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Majid Shahriari, a quantum physicist, was killed. Fereydoon Abbasi, a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Defense was seriously wounded. Wired speculated that the assassinations could indicate that whoever was behind Stuxnet felt that it was not sufficient to stop the nuclear program.[119] That same Wired article suggested the Iranian government could have been behind the assassinations.[119] In January 2010, another Iranian nuclear scientist, a physics professor at Tehran University, was killed in a similar bomb explosion.[119] On 11 January 2012, a director of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was killed in an attack quite similar to the one that killed Shahriari.[120]

An analysis by the FAS demonstrates that Iran's enrichment capacity grew during 2010. The study indicated that Iran's centrifuges appeared to be performing 60% better than in the previous year, which would significantly reduce Tehran's time to produce bomb-grade uranium. The FAS report was reviewed by an official with the IAEA who affirmed the study.[121][122][123]

European and US officials, along with private experts, told Reuters that Iranian engineers were successful in neutralizing and purging Stuxnet from their country's nuclear machinery.[124]

Given the growth in Iranian enrichment ability in 2010, the country may have intentionally put out misinformation to cause Stuxnet's creators to believe that the worm was more successful in disabling the Iranian nuclear program than it actually was.[38]

Israel edit

Israel, through Unit 8200,[125][126] has been speculated to be the country behind Stuxnet in many media reports[89][102][127] and by experts such as Richard A. Falkenrath, former Senior Director for Policy and Plans within the US Office of Homeland Security.[128][90] Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence for Israeli newspaper Haaretz and wrote a book about Israeli intelligence, also suspected that Israel was involved, noting that Meir Dagan, the former (up until 2011) head of the national intelligence agency Mossad, had his term extended in 2009 because he was said to be involved in important projects. Additionally, in 2010 Israel grew to expect that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in 2014 or 2015 – at least three years later than earlier estimates – without the need for an Israeli military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities; "They seem to know something, that they have more time than originally thought", he added.[27][61] Israel has not publicly commented on the Stuxnet attack but in 2010 confirmed that cyberwarfare was now among the pillars of its defense doctrine, with a military intelligence unit set up to pursue both defensive and offensive options.[129][130][131] When questioned whether Israel was behind the virus in the fall of 2010, some Israeli officials[who?] broke into "wide smiles", fueling speculation that the government of Israel was involved with its genesis.[132] American presidential advisor Gary Samore also smiled when Stuxnet was mentioned,[61] although American officials have suggested that the virus originated abroad.[132] According to The Telegraph, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a video celebrating operational successes of Gabi Ashkenazi, retiring Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff, was shown at his retirement party and included references to Stuxnet, thus strengthening claims that Israel's security forces were responsible.[133]

In 2009, a year before Stuxnet was discovered, Scott Borg of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit (US-CCU)[134] suggested that Israel may prefer to mount a cyberattack rather than a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.[111] In late 2010 Borg stated, "Israel certainly has the ability to create Stuxnet and there is little downside to such an attack because it would be virtually impossible to prove who did it. So a tool like Stuxnet is Israel's obvious weapon of choice."[135] Iran uses P-1 centrifuges at Natanz, the design for which A. Q. Khan stole in 1976 and took to Pakistan. His black market nuclear-proliferation network sold P-1s to, among other customers, Iran. Experts believe that Israel also somehow acquired P-1s and tested Stuxnet on the centrifuges, installed at the Dimona facility that is part of its own nuclear program.[61] The equipment may be from the United States, which received P-1s from Libya's former nuclear program.[136][61]

Some have also cited several clues in the code such as a concealed reference to the word MYRTUS, believed to refer to the Latin name myrtus of the Myrtle tree, which in Hebrew is called hadassah. Hadassah was the birth name of the former Jewish queen of Persia, Queen Esther.[137][138] However, it may be that the "MYRTUS" reference is simply a misinterpreted reference to SCADA components known as RTUs (Remote Terminal Units) and that this reference is actually "My RTUs"–a management feature of SCADA.[139] Also, the number 19790509 appears once in the code and may refer to the date 1979 May 09, the day Habib Elghanian, a Persian Jew, was executed in Tehran.[67][140][141] Another date that appears in the code is "24 September 2007", the day that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University and made comments questioning the validity of the Holocaust.[38] Such data is not conclusive, since, as noted by Symantec, "...attackers would have the natural desire to implicate another party".[67]

United States edit

There has also been reports on the involvement of the United States and its collaboration with Israel,[142][143] with one report stating that "there is vanishingly little doubt that [it] played a role in creating the worm."[38] It has been reported that the United States, under one of its most secret programs, initiated by the Bush administration and accelerated by the Obama administration,[144] has sought to destroy Iran's nuclear program by novel methods such as undermining Iranian computer systems. A leaked diplomatic cable showed how the United States was advised to target Iran's nuclear abilities through 'covert sabotage'.[145] An article in The New York Times in January 2009 credited a then-unspecified program with preventing an Israeli military attack on Iran where some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges.[146] A Wired article claimed that Stuxnet "is believed to have been created by the United States".[147] Dutch historian Peter Koop speculated that the Tailored Access Operations could have developed Stuxnet, possibly in collaboration with Israel.[148]

The fact that John Bumgarner, a former intelligence officer and member of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit (US-CCU), published an article prior to Stuxnet being discovered or deciphered, that outlined a strategic cyber strike on centrifuges[149] and suggests that cyber attacks are permissible against nation states which are operating uranium enrichment programs that violate international treaties gives some credibility to these claims. Bumgarner pointed out that the centrifuges used to process fuel for nuclear weapons are a key target for cybertage operations and that they can be made to destroy themselves by manipulating their rotational speeds.[150]

In a March 2012 interview with 60 Minutes, retired US Air Force General Michael Hayden – who served as director of both the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency – while denying knowledge of who created Stuxnet said that he believed it had been "a good idea" but that it carried a downside in that it had legitimized the use of sophisticated cyber weapons designed to cause physical damage. Hayden said, "There are those out there who can take a look at this... and maybe even attempt to turn it to their own purposes". In the same report, Sean McGurk, a former cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security noted that the Stuxnet source code could now be downloaded online and modified to be directed at new target systems. Speaking of the Stuxnet creators, he said, "They opened the box. They demonstrated the capability... It's not something that can be put back."[151]

Joint effort and other states and targets edit

In April 2011, Iranian government official Gholam Reza Jalali stated that an investigation had concluded that the United States and Israel were behind the Stuxnet attack.[152] Frank Rieger stated that three European countries' intelligence agencies agreed that Stuxnet was a joint United States-Israel effort. The code for the Windows injector and the PLC payload differ in style, likely implying collaboration. Other experts believe that a US-Israel cooperation is unlikely because "the level of trust between the two countries' intelligence and military establishments is not high."[38]

A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B. Alexander stated: "And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack. The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s."[153]

China,[154] Jordan, and France are other possibilities, and Siemens may have also participated.[38][142] Langner speculated that the infection may have spread from USB drives belonging to Russian contractors since the Iranian targets were not accessible via the Internet.[21][155] In 2019, it was reported that an Iranian mole working for Dutch intelligence at the behest of Israel and the CIA inserted the Stuxnet virus with a USB flash drive or convinced another person working at the Natanz facility to do so.[156][157]

Sandro Gaycken from the Free University Berlin argued that the attack on Iran was a ruse to distract from Stuxnet's real purpose. According to him, its broad dissemination in more than 100,000 industrial plants worldwide suggests a field test of a cyber weapon in different security cultures, testing their preparedness, resilience, and reactions, all highly valuable information for a cyberwar unit.[158]

The United Kingdom has denied involvement in the worm's creation.[159]

In July 2013, Edward Snowden claimed that Stuxnet was cooperatively developed by the United States and Israel.[160]

Deployment in North Korea edit

According to a report by Reuters, the NSA also tried to sabotage North Korea's nuclear program using a version of Stuxnet. The operation was reportedly launched in tandem with the attack that targeted Iranian centrifuges in 2009–10. The North Korean nuclear program shares many similarities with the Iranian, both having been developed with technology transferred by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The effort failed, however, because North Korea's extreme secrecy and isolation made it impossible to introduce Stuxnet into the nuclear facility.[161]

Stuxnet 2.0 cyberattack edit

In 2018, Gholamreza Jalali, Iran's chief of the National Passive Defence Organisation (NPDO), claimed that his country fended off a Stuxnet-like attack targeting the country's telecom infrastructure. Iran's Telecommunications minister Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi has since accused Israel of orchestrating the attack. Iran plans to sue Israel through the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and is also willing to launch a retaliation attack if Israel does not desist.[162]

Related malware edit

"Stuxnet's Secret Twin" edit

A November 2013 article[163] in Foreign Policy magazine claims existence of an earlier, much more sophisticated attack on the centrifuge complex at Natanz, focused on increasing centrifuge failure rate over a long time period by stealthily inducing uranium hexafluoride gas overpressure incidents. This malware was capable of spreading only by being physically installed, probably by previously contaminated field equipment used by contractors working on Siemens control systems within the complex. It is not clear whether this attack attempt was successful, but it being followed by a different, simpler and more conventional attack is indicative.

Duqu edit

Main article: Duqu

On 1 September 2011, a new worm was found, thought to be related to Stuxnet. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics analyzed the malware, naming the threat Duqu.[164][165] Symantec, based on this report, continued the analysis of the threat, calling it "nearly identical to Stuxnet, but with a completely different purpose", and published a detailed technical paper.[166] The main component used in Duqu is designed to capture information[62] such as keystrokes and system information. The exfiltrated data may be used to enable a future Stuxnet-like attack. On 28 December 2011, Kaspersky Lab's director of global research and analysis spoke to Reuters about recent research results showing that the platform Stuxnet and Duqu both originated in 2007, and is being referred to as Tilded due to the ~d at the beginning of the file names. Also uncovered in this research was the possibility for three more variants based on the Tilded platform.[167]

Flame edit

Main article: Flame (malware)

In May 2012, the new malware "Flame" was found, thought to be related to Stuxnet.[168] Researchers named the program "Flame" after the name of one of its modules.[168] After analysing the code of Flame, Kaspersky Lab said that there is a strong relationship between Flame and Stuxnet. An early version of Stuxnet contained code to propagate infections via USB drives that is nearly identical to a Flame module that exploits the same vulnerability.[169]

Targeting military command, control, communications and intelligence edit

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Tom Z. Collina, Director of Policy at the Ploughshares Fund, wrote that there are thousands and maybe millions of attacks each day on the U.S. military's use of the internet and similar DoD-only communications. If a cybersecurity attack on any nuclear-weapon state does what the U.S. and Israel reportedly did to Iran with Stuxnet, it could convince the leaders of that country that they were being attacked with nuclear weapons when they weren't. This could lead them to start a nuclear war by mistake, believing that they could lose the ability to respond appropriately if they waited for more information.[170]

If the country targeted with such a cybersecurity attack were India or Pakistan, the resulting nuclear war would likely produce a nuclear autumn during which roughly a quarter of humanity, most of whom were not directly impacted by nuclear explosions, could starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner.[171] If the United States, Russia or China (or maybe even the United Kingdom or France) experienced such a cybersecurity attack, the resulting nuclear war would likely produce a nuclear winter, during which 98 percent of humanity would die of starvation if they did not succumb to something else sooner.[172][relevant?]

Perry and Collina also noted that a nuclear war by accident is much more likely than Russia launching a first strike on the United States. They claimed that the world's major nuclear arsenals are focusing on the wrong problem. They cited several sources to support this claim including a GAO study that found that many advanced weapon systems in the U.S. use commercial and free software without changing the default passwords. Hackers working for the GAO were able to penetrate DoD systems undetected in part using default passwords found on the internet.[173][relevant?]

Media coverage edit

Since 2010, there has been extensive international media coverage on Stuxnet and its aftermath. In early commentary, The Economist pointed out that Stuxnet was "a new kind of cyber-attack."[174] On 8 July 2011, Wired then published an article detailing how network security experts were able to decipher the origins of Stuxnet. In that piece, Kim Zetter claimed that Stuxnet's "cost–benefit ratio is still in question."[175] Later commentators tended to focus on the strategic significance of Stuxnet as a cyber weapon. Following the Wired piece, Holger Stark called Stuxnet the "first digital weapon of geopolitical importance, it could change the way wars are fought."[176] Meanwhile, Eddie Walsh referred to Stuxnet as "the world's newest high-end asymmetric threat."[177] Ultimately, some claim that the "extensive media coverage afforded to Stuxnet has only served as an advertisement for the vulnerabilities used by various cybercriminal groups."[178] While that may be the case, the media coverage has also increased awareness of cyber security threats.

Alex Gibney's 2016 documentary Zero Days covers the phenomenon around Stuxnet.[179] A zero-day (also known as 0-day) vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to, or unaddressed by, those who should be interested in mitigating the vulnerability (including the vendor of the target software). Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect computer programs, data, additional computers or a network.

In 2016, it was revealed that General James Cartwright, the former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, had leaked information related to Stuxnet. He later pleaded guilty for lying to FBI agents pursuing an investigation into the leak.[180][181] On 17 January 2017, he was granted a full pardon in this case by President Obama, thus expunging his conviction.

In popular culture edit

Besides the aforementioned Alex Gibney documentary Zero Days (2016), which looks into the malware and the cyberwarfare surrounding it, other works which reference Stuxnet include:

  • In Castle, season 8, episode 18 "Backstabber" Stuxnet is revealed to have been (fictionally) created by MI6, and a version of it is used to take down the London power grid.
  • Trojan Horse is a novel written by Windows utility writer and novelist Mark Russinovich. It features the usage of the Stuxnet virus as a main plot line for the story, and the attempt of Iran to bypass it.
  • In Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Stuxnet is the named type of computer virus which infected Kusanagi and Manamura allowing false memories to be implanted.
  • In July 2017, MRSA (Mat Zo) released a track named "Stuxnet" through Hospital Records.
  • In Ubisoft's 2013 video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the protagonist, Sam Fisher, makes use of a mobile, airborne headquarters ("Paladin") which is said at one point within the game's story mode to have been targeted by a Stuxnet-style virus, causing its systems to fail and the plane to careen towards the ocean, and would have crashed without Fisher's intervening.[182]
  • In Michael Mann's 2015 movie Blackhat, the code shown as belonging to a virus used by a hacker to cause the coolant pumps explosion in a nuclear plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, is actual Stuxnet decompiled code.
  • In the third episode of Star Trek: Discovery, "Context Is for Kings", characters identify a segment of code as being part of an experimental transportation system. The code shown is decompiled Stuxnet code.[183] Much of the same code is shown in the eighth episode of The Expanse, "Pyre", this time as a visual representation of a "diagnostic exploit" breaking into the control software for nuclear missiles.

See also edit

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Further reading edit

  • Langner, Ralph (March 2011). . TED. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  • "The short path from cyber missiles to dirty digital bombs". Blog. Langner Communications GmbH. 26 December 2010. from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  • Ralph Langner's Stuxnet Deep Dive 17 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  • Langner, Ralph (November 2013). To Kill a Centrifuge: A Technical Analysis of What Stuxnet's Creators Tried to Achieve (PDF) (Report). (PDF) from the original on 13 June 2016. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
  • Falliere, Nicolas (21 September 2010). "Exploring Stuxnet's PLC Infection Process". Blogs: Security Response. Symantec. from the original on 21 June 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  • "Stuxnet Questions and Answers". News from the Lab (blog). F-Secure. 1 October 2010. from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  • Dang, Bruce; Ferrie, Peter (28 December 2010). "27C3: Adventures in analyzing Stuxnet". Chaos Computer Club e.V. from the original on 11 October 2015. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  • Russinovich, Mark (30 March 2011). . Mark's Blog. Microsoft Corporation. MSDN Blogs. Archived from the original on 23 April 2011. Retrieved 13 May 2011.
  • Zetter, Kim (11 July 2011). "How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History". Threat Level Blog. Wired. from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 11 July 2011.
  • Kroft, Steve (4 March 2012). "Stuxnet: Computer worm opens new era of warfare". 60 Minutes. CBS News. from the original on 15 October 2013. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  • Sanger, David E. (1 June 2012). "Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran". The New York Times. from the original on 17 September 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  • Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7704-3617-9.

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stuxnet.
  • fanny.bmp – at Securelist
  • fanny.bmp source – at GitHub
  • Stuxnet code – at Internet Archive

February 15, 2024
stuxnet, malicious, computer, worm, first, uncovered, 2010, thought, have, been, development, since, least, 2005, targets, supervisory, control, data, acquisition, scada, systems, believed, responsible, causing, substantial, damage, nuclear, program, iran, alt. Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005 Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran 2 Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility multiple independent news organizations recognize Stuxnet to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games 3 4 5 The program started during the Bush administration was rapidly expanded within the first months of Barack Obama s presidency 6 StuxnetTechnical nameAs Stuxnet By MicrosoftWorm Win32 Stuxnet Letter TrojanDropper Win32 StuxnetBy SymantecW32 Stuxnet W32 Stuxnet lnkBy SophosTroj Stuxnet Letter Trojan Dropper Win32 Stuxnet Letter Worm Win32 Stuxnet Letter TR Drop Stuxnet Letter Number By KasperskyWorm Win32 StuxnetBy F SecureTrojan Dropper W32 Stuxnet Rootkit W32 StuxnetBy Trend MicroRTKT STUXNET Letter LNK STUXNET Letter WORM STUXNET Letter ClassificationComputer wormTypeDropperAuthor s Equation GroupOperating system s affectedWindows 2000Windows XPWindows Server 2003Windows VistaWindows Server 2008Windows 7Windows Server 2008 R2Source 1 Stuxnet specifically targets programmable logic controllers PLCs which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery and industrial processes including gas centrifuges for separating nuclear material Exploiting four zero day flaws 7 Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks then seeking out Siemens Step7 software Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart 2 Stuxnet s design and architecture are not domain specific and it could be tailored as a platform for attacking modern SCADA and PLC systems e g in factory assembly lines or power plants most of which are in Europe Japan and the United States 8 Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one fifth of Iran s nuclear centrifuges 9 Targeting industrial control systems the worm infected over 200 000 computers and caused 1 000 machines to physically degrade 10 Stuxnet has three modules a worm that executes all routines related to the main payload of the attack a link file that automatically executes the propagated copies of the worm and a rootkit component responsible for hiding all malicious files and processes to prevent detection of Stuxnet 11 It is typically introduced to the target environment via an infected USB flash drive thus crossing any air gap The worm then propagates across the network scanning for Siemens Step7 software on computers controlling a PLC In the absence of either criterion Stuxnet becomes dormant inside the computer If both the conditions are fulfilled Stuxnet introduces the infected rootkit onto the PLC and Step7 software modifying the code and giving unexpected commands to the PLC while returning a loop of normal operation system values back to the users 12 13 Contents 1 Discovery 2 History 3 Affected countries 4 Operation 4 1 Windows infection 4 2 Step 7 software infection 4 3 PLC infection 5 Removal 6 Control system security 7 Target and origin 7 1 Iran as a target 7 1 1 Natanz nuclear facilities 7 1 2 Iranian reaction 7 1 3 Israel 7 1 4 United States 7 1 5 Joint effort and other states and targets 7 2 Deployment in North Korea 7 3 Stuxnet 2 0 cyberattack 8 Related malware 8 1 Stuxnet s Secret Twin 8 2 Duqu 8 3 Flame 8 4 Targeting military command control communications and intelligence 9 Media coverage 10 In popular culture 11 See also 12 References 13 Further reading 14 External linksDiscovery editStuxnet discovered by Sergey Ulasen from a Belarusian antivirus company VirusBlokAda initially spread via Microsoft Windows and targeted Siemens industrial control systems While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems 14 nor the first publicly known intentional act of cyberwarfare to be implemented it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems 15 and the first to include a programmable logic controller PLC rootkit 16 17 The worm initially spreads indiscriminately but includes a highly specialized malware payload that is designed to target only Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA systems that are configured to control and monitor specific industrial processes 18 19 Stuxnet infects PLCs by subverting the Step 7 software application that is used to reprogram these devices 20 21 Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations 22 with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran 21 23 24 Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60 percent of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran 25 Siemens stated that the worm caused no damage to its customers 15 but the Iran nuclear program which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured secretly was damaged by Stuxnet 26 27 28 Kaspersky Lab concluded that the sophisticated attack could only have been conducted with nation state support 29 F Secure s chief researcher Mikko Hypponen when asked if possible nation state support were involved agreed That s what it would look like yes 30 In May 2011 the PBS program Need To Know cited a statement by Gary Samore White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction in which he said we re glad they the Iranians are having trouble with their centrifuge machine and that we the U S and its allies are doing everything we can to make sure that we complicate matters for them offering winking acknowledgement of United States involvement in Stuxnet 31 According to The Daily Telegraph a showreel that was played at a retirement party for the head of the Israel Defense Forces IDF Gabi Ashkenazi included references to Stuxnet as one of his operational successes as the IDF chief of staff 32 On 1 June 2012 an article in The New York Times reported that Stuxnet was part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games devised by the NSA under President George W Bush and executed under President Barack Obama 33 On 24 July 2012 an article by Chris Matyszczyk from CNET 34 reported that the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran e mailed F Secure s chief research officer Mikko Hypponen to report a new instance of malware On 25 December 2012 an Iranian semi official news agency announced there was a cyberattack by Stuxnet this time on the industries in the southern area of the country The malware targeted a power plant and some other industries in Hormozgan province in recent months 35 According to Eugene Kaspersky the worm also infected a nuclear power plant in Russia Kaspersky noted however that since the power plant is not connected to the public Internet the system should remain safe 36 History editThe worm was first identified by the security company VirusBlokAda in mid June 2010 20 Journalist Brian Krebs s blog posting on 15 July 2010 was the first widely read report on the worm 37 38 The original name given by VirusBlokAda was Rootkit Tmphider 39 Symantec however called it W32 Temphid later changing to W32 Stuxnet 40 Its current name is derived from a combination of some keywords in the software stub and mrxnet sys 41 42 The reason for the discovery at this time is attributed to the virus accidentally spreading beyond its intended target the Natanz plant due to a programming error introduced in an update this led to the worm spreading to an engineer s computer that had been connected to the centrifuges and spreading further when the engineer returned home and connected his computer to the internet 33 Kaspersky Lab experts at first estimated that Stuxnet started spreading around March or April 2010 43 but the first variant of the worm appeared in June 2009 20 On 15 July 2010 the day the worm s existence became widely known a distributed denial of service attack was made on the servers for two leading mailing lists on industrial systems security This attack from an unknown source but likely related to Stuxnet disabled one of the lists thereby interrupting an important source of information for power plants and factories 38 On the other hand researchers at Symantec have uncovered a version of the Stuxnet computer virus that was used to attack Iran s nuclear program in November 2007 being developed as early as 2005 when Iran was still setting up its uranium enrichment facility 44 The second variant with substantial improvements appeared in March 2010 apparently because its authors believed that Stuxnet was not spreading fast enough a third with minor improvements appeared in April 2010 38 The worm contains a component with a build timestamp from 3 February 2010 45 In the United Kingdom on 25 November 2010 Sky News reported that it had received information from an anonymous source at an unidentified IT security organization that Stuxnet or a variation of the worm had been traded on the black market 46 In 2015 Kaspersky Lab noted that the Equation Group had used two of the same zero day attacks prior to their use in Stuxnet in another malware called fanny bmp 47 48 and commented that the similar type of usage of both exploits together in different computer worms at around the same time indicates that the Equation Group and the Stuxnet developers are either the same or working closely together 49 In 2019 Chronicle researchers Juan Andres Guerrero Saade and Silas Cutler presented evidence of at least four distinct threat actor malware platforms collaborating to create the different versions of Stuxnet 50 51 The collaboration was dubbed GOSSIP GIRL after a threat group leaked from classified CSE slides that included Flame 52 GOSSIP GIRL is a cooperative umbrella that includes the Equation Group Flame Duqu and Flowershop also known as Cheshire Cat 53 54 55 In 2020 researcher Facundo Munoz found evidence suggesting that Equation Group collaborated with Stuxnet developers in 2009 by lending them at least one zero day exploit 56 and one exploit from 2008 57 that was being actively used in the wild by the Conficker computer worm and Chinese hackers 58 In 2017 a group of hackers known as The Shadow Brokers leaked a massive trove of tools belonging to Equation Group including new versions of both exploits compiled in 2010 showing significant code overlaps as both Stuxnet s exploits and Equation Group s exploits were developed using a set of libraries called Exploit Development Framework also leaked by The Shadow Brokers Affected countries editA study of the spread of Stuxnet by Symantec showed that the main affected countries in the early days of the infection were Iran Indonesia and India 59 Country Share of infected computersIran 58 9 Indonesia 18 2 India 8 3 Azerbaijan 2 6 United States 1 6 Pakistan 1 3 Other countries 9 2 Iran was reported to have fortified its cyberwar abilities following the Stuxnet attack and has been suspected of retaliatory attacks against United States banks in Operation Ababil 60 Operation editUnlike most malware Stuxnet does little harm to computers and networks that do not meet specific configuration requirements The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit It was a marksman s job 61 While the worm is promiscuous it makes itself inert if Siemens software is not found on infected computers and contains safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to more than three others and to erase itself on 24 June 2012 38 For its targets Stuxnet contains among other things code for a man in the middle attack that fakes industrial process control sensor signals so an infected system does not shut down due to detected abnormal behavior 38 61 62 Such complexity is very unusual for malware The worm consists of a layered attack against three different systems The Windows operating system Siemens PCS 7 WinCC and STEP7 industrial software applications that run on Windows and One or more Siemens S7 PLCs Windows infection edit Stuxnet attacked Windows systems using an unprecedented four zero day attacks plus the CPLINK vulnerability and a vulnerability used by the Conficker worm 63 It is initially spread using infected removable drives such as USB flash drives 21 45 which contain Windows shortcut files to initiate executable code 64 The worm then uses other exploits and techniques such as peer to peer remote procedure call RPC to infect and update other computers inside private networks that are not directly connected to the Internet 65 66 67 The number of zero day exploits used is unusual as they are highly valued and malware creators do not typically make use of and thus simultaneously make visible four different zero day exploits in the same worm 23 Amongst these exploits were remote code execution on a computer with Printer Sharing enabled 68 and the LNK PIF vulnerability 69 in which file execution is accomplished when an icon is viewed in Windows Explorer negating the need for user interaction 70 Stuxnet is unusually large at half a megabyte in size 65 and written in several different programming languages including C and C which is also irregular for malware 15 20 62 The Windows component of the malware is promiscuous in that it spreads relatively quickly and indiscriminately 45 The malware has both user mode and kernel mode rootkit ability under Windows 67 and its device drivers have been digitally signed with the private keys of two public key certificates that were stolen from separate well known companies JMicron and Realtek both located at Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan 45 65 The driver signing helped it install kernel mode rootkit drivers successfully without users being notified and thus it remained undetected for a relatively long period of time 71 Both compromised certificates have been revoked by Verisign Two websites in Denmark and Malaysia were configured as command and control servers for the malware allowing it to be updated and for industrial espionage to be conducted by uploading information Both of these domain names have subsequently been redirected by their DNS service provider to Dynadot as part of a global effort to disable the malware 67 38 Step 7 software infection edit nbsp Overview of normal communications between Step 7 and a Siemens PLC nbsp Overview of Stuxnet hijacking communication between Step 7 software and a Siemens PLCAccording to researcher Ralph Langner 72 73 once installed on a Windows system Stuxnet infects project files belonging to Siemens WinCC PCS 7 SCADA control software 74 Step 7 and subverts a key communication library of WinCC called s7otbxdx dll Doing so intercepts communications between the WinCC software running under Windows and the target Siemens PLC devices when the two are connected via a data cable The malware is able to modify the code on PLC devices unnoticed and subsequently to mask its presence from WinCC if the control software attempts to read an infected block of memory from the PLC system 67 The malware furthermore used a zero day exploit in the WinCC SCADA database software in the form of a hard coded database password 75 PLC infection edit nbsp Siemens Simatic S7 300 PLC CPU with three I O modules attachedStuxnet s payload targets only those SCADA configurations that meet criteria that it is programmed to identify 38 Stuxnet requires specific slave variable frequency drives frequency converter drives to be attached to the targeted Siemens S7 300 system and its associated modules It only attacks those PLC systems with variable frequency drives from two specific vendors Vacon based in Finland and Fararo Paya based in Iran 76 Furthermore it monitors the frequency of the attached motors and only attacks systems that spin between 807 Hz and 1 210 Hz This is a much higher frequency than motors typically operate at in most industrial applications with the notable exception of gas centrifuges 76 Stuxnet installs malware into memory block DB890 of the PLC that monitors the Profibus messaging bus of the system 67 When certain criteria are met it periodically modifies the frequency to 1 410 Hz and then to 2 Hz and then to 1 064 Hz and thus affects the operation of the connected motors by changing their rotational speed 76 It also installs a rootkit the first such documented case on this platform that hides the malware on the system and masks the changes in rotational speed from monitoring systems Removal editSiemens has released a detection and removal tool for Stuxnet Siemens recommends contacting customer support if an infection is detected and advises installing Microsoft updates for security vulnerabilities and prohibiting the use of third party USB flash drives 77 Siemens also advises immediately upgrading password access codes 78 The worm s ability to reprogram external PLCs may complicate the removal procedure Symantec s Liam O Murchu warns that fixing Windows systems may not fully solve the infection a thorough audit of PLCs may be necessary Despite speculation that incorrect removal of the worm could cause damage 15 Siemens reports that in the first four months since discovery the malware was successfully removed from the systems of 22 customers without any adverse effects 77 79 Control system security editMain article Control system security Prevention of control system security incidents 80 such as from viral infections like Stuxnet is a topic that is being addressed in both the public and the private sector The US Department of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Division NCSD operates the Control System Security Program CSSP 81 The program operates a specialized computer emergency response team called the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team ICS CERT conducts a biannual conference ICSJWG provides training publishes recommended practices and provides a self assessment tool As part of a Department of Homeland Security plan to improve American computer security in 2008 it and the Idaho National Laboratory INL worked with Siemens to identify security holes in the company s widely used Process Control System 7 PCS 7 and its software Step 7 In July 2008 INL and Siemens publicly announced flaws in the control system at a Chicago conference Stuxnet exploited these holes in 2009 61 Several industry organizations 82 83 and professional societies 84 85 have published standards and best practice guidelines providing direction and guidance for control system end users on how to establish a control system security management program The basic premise that all of these documents share is that prevention requires a multi layered approach often termed defense in depth 86 The layers include policies and procedures awareness and training network segmentation access control measures physical security measures system hardening e g patch management and system monitoring anti virus and intrusion prevention system IPS The standards and best practices who also all improper synthesis recommend starting with a risk analysis and a control system security assessment 87 88 Target and origin editThis section needs to be updated Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information December 2017 Experts believe that Stuxnet required the largest and costliest development effort in malware history 38 Developing its many abilities would have required a team of highly capable programmers in depth knowledge of industrial processes and an interest in attacking industrial infrastructure 15 20 Eric Byres who has years of experience maintaining and troubleshooting Siemens systems told Wired that writing the code would have taken many man months if not man years 65 Symantec estimates that the group developing Stuxnet would have consisted of between five and thirty people and would have taken six months to prepare 89 38 The Guardian the BBC and The New York Times all claimed that unnamed experts studying Stuxnet believe the complexity of the code indicates that only a nation state would have the abilities to produce it 23 89 90 The self destruct and other safeguards within the code implied that a Western government was responsible or at least is responsible for its development 38 However software security expert Bruce Schneier initially condemned the 2010 news coverage of Stuxnet as hype stating that it was almost entirely based on speculation 91 But after subsequent research Schneier stated in 2012 that we can now conclusively link Stuxnet to the centrifuge structure at the Natanz nuclear enrichment lab in Iran 92 In January 2024 de Volkskrant reported that Dutch engineer Erik van Sabben was the saboteur who had infiltrated the underground nuclear complex in the city of Natanz and installed equipment infected with Stuxnet 93 Iran as a target edit Ralph Langner the researcher who identified that Stuxnet infected PLCs 21 first speculated publicly in September 2010 that the malware was of Israeli origin and that it targeted Iranian nuclear facilities 94 However Langner more recently at a TED conference recorded in February 2011 stated that My opinion is that the Mossad is involved but that the leading force is not Israel The leading force behind Stuxnet is the cyber superpower there is only one and that s the United States 95 Kevin Hogan Senior Director of Security Response at Symantec reported that most infected systems were in Iran about 60 96 which has led to speculation that it may have been deliberately targeting high value infrastructure in Iran 23 including either the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant or the Natanz nuclear facility 65 97 98 Langner called the malware a one shot weapon and said that the intended target was probably hit 99 although he admitted this was speculation 65 Another German researcher and spokesman of the German based Chaos Computer Club Frank Rieger was the first to speculate that Natanz was the target 38 Natanz nuclear facilities edit nbsp Anti aircraft guns guarding Natanz Nuclear FacilityAccording to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in September 2010 experts on Iran and computer security specialists were increasingly convinced that Stuxnet was meant to sabotage the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz where the centrifuge operational capacity had dropped over the past year by 30 percent 100 On 23 November 2010 it was announced that uranium enrichment at Natanz had ceased several times because of a series of major technical problems 101 A serious nuclear accident supposedly the shutdown of some of its centrifuges 102 occurred at the site in the first half of 2009 which is speculated to have forced Gholam Reza Aghazadeh the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran AEOI to resign 103 Statistics published by the Federation of American Scientists FAS show that the number of enrichment centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4 700 to about 3 900 beginning around the time the nuclear incident WikiLeaks mentioned would have occurred 104 The Institute for Science and International Security ISIS suggests in a report published in December 2010 that Stuxnet is a reasonable explanation for the apparent damage 105 at Natanz and may have destroyed up to 1 000 centrifuges 10 percent sometime between November 2009 and late January 2010 The authors conclude The attacks seem designed to force a change in the centrifuge s rotor speed first raising the speed and then lowering it likely with the intention of inducing excessive vibrations or distortions that would destroy the centrifuge If its goal was to quickly destroy all the centrifuges in the FEP Fuel Enrichment Plant Stuxnet failed But if the goal was to destroy a more limited number of centrifuges and set back Iran s progress in operating the FEP while making detection difficult it may have succeeded at least temporarily 105 The Institute for Science and International Security ISIS report further notes that Iranian authorities have attempted to conceal the breakdown by installing new centrifuges on a large scale 105 106 The worm worked by first causing an infected Iranian IR 1 centrifuge to increase from its normal operating speed of 1 064 hertz to 1 410 hertz for 15 minutes before returning to its normal frequency Twenty seven days later the worm went back into action slowing the infected centrifuges down to a few hundred hertz for a full 50 minutes The stresses from the excessive then slower speeds caused the aluminium centrifugal tubes to expand often forcing parts of the centrifuges into sufficient contact with each other to destroy the machine 107 According to The Washington Post International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA cameras installed in the Natanz facility recorded the sudden dismantling and removal of approximately 900 1 000 centrifuges during the time the Stuxnet worm was reportedly active at the plant Iranian technicians however were able to quickly replace the centrifuges and the report concluded that uranium enrichment was likely only briefly disrupted 108 On 15 February 2011 the Institute for Science and International Security released a report concluding that Assuming Iran exercises caution Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the Natanz plant Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems To prevent re infection Iran will have to exercise special caution since so many computers in Iran contain Stuxnet Although Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy centrifuges at the Natanz facility destruction was by no means total Moreover Stuxnet did not lower the production of low enriched uranium LEU during 2010 LEU quantities could have certainly been greater and Stuxnet could be an important part of the reason why they did not increase significantly Nonetheless there remain important questions about why Stuxnet destroyed only 1 000 centrifuges One observation is that it may be harder to destroy centrifuges by use of cyber attacks than often believed 109 Iranian reaction edit The Associated Press reported that the semi official Iranian Students News Agency released a statement on 24 September 2010 stating that experts from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran met in the previous week to discuss how Stuxnet could be removed from their systems 19 According to analysts such as David Albright Western intelligence agencies had been attempting to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program for some time 110 111 The head of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant told Reuters that only the personal computers of staff at the plant had been infected by Stuxnet and the state run newspaper Iran Daily quoted Reza Taghipour Iran s telecommunications minister as saying that it had not caused serious damage to government systems 90 The Director of Information Technology Council at the Iranian Ministry of Industries and Mines Mahmud Liaii has said that An electronic war has been launched against Iran This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to locations outside Iran 112 In response to the infection Iran assembled a team to combat it With more than 30 000 IP addresses affected in Iran an official said that the infection was fast spreading in Iran and the problem had been compounded by the ability of Stuxnet to mutate Iran had set up its own systems to clean up infections and had advised against using the Siemens SCADA antivirus since it is suspected that the antivirus contains embedded code which updates Stuxnet instead of removing it 113 114 115 116 According to Hamid Alipour deputy head of Iran s government Information Technology Company The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading He reported that his company had begun the cleanup process at Iran s sensitive centres and organizations 114 We had anticipated that we could root out the virus within one to two months but the virus is not stable and since we started the cleanup process three new versions of it have been spreading he told the Islamic Republic News Agency on 27 September 2010 116 On 29 November 2010 Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated for the first time that a computer virus had caused problems with the controller handling the centrifuges at its Natanz facilities According to Reuters he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts 117 118 On the same day two Iranian nuclear scientists were targeted in separate but nearly simultaneous car bomb attacks near Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran Majid Shahriari a quantum physicist was killed Fereydoon Abbasi a high ranking official at the Ministry of Defense was seriously wounded Wired speculated that the assassinations could indicate that whoever was behind Stuxnet felt that it was not sufficient to stop the nuclear program 119 That same Wired article suggested the Iranian government could have been behind the assassinations 119 In January 2010 another Iranian nuclear scientist a physics professor at Tehran University was killed in a similar bomb explosion 119 On 11 January 2012 a director of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed in an attack quite similar to the one that killed Shahriari 120 An analysis by the FAS demonstrates that Iran s enrichment capacity grew during 2010 The study indicated that Iran s centrifuges appeared to be performing 60 better than in the previous year which would significantly reduce Tehran s time to produce bomb grade uranium The FAS report was reviewed by an official with the IAEA who affirmed the study 121 122 123 European and US officials along with private experts told Reuters that Iranian engineers were successful in neutralizing and purging Stuxnet from their country s nuclear machinery 124 Given the growth in Iranian enrichment ability in 2010 the country may have intentionally put out misinformation to cause Stuxnet s creators to believe that the worm was more successful in disabling the Iranian nuclear program than it actually was 38 Israel edit Israel through Unit 8200 125 126 has been speculated to be the country behind Stuxnet in many media reports 89 102 127 and by experts such as Richard A Falkenrath former Senior Director for Policy and Plans within the US Office of Homeland Security 128 90 Yossi Melman who covers intelligence for Israeli newspaper Haaretz and wrote a book about Israeli intelligence also suspected that Israel was involved noting that Meir Dagan the former up until 2011 head of the national intelligence agency Mossad had his term extended in 2009 because he was said to be involved in important projects Additionally in 2010 Israel grew to expect that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in 2014 or 2015 at least three years later than earlier estimates without the need for an Israeli military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities They seem to know something that they have more time than originally thought he added 27 61 Israel has not publicly commented on the Stuxnet attack but in 2010 confirmed that cyberwarfare was now among the pillars of its defense doctrine with a military intelligence unit set up to pursue both defensive and offensive options 129 130 131 When questioned whether Israel was behind the virus in the fall of 2010 some Israeli officials who broke into wide smiles fueling speculation that the government of Israel was involved with its genesis 132 American presidential advisor Gary Samore also smiled when Stuxnet was mentioned 61 although American officials have suggested that the virus originated abroad 132 According to The Telegraph Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a video celebrating operational successes of Gabi Ashkenazi retiring Israel Defense Forces IDF Chief of Staff was shown at his retirement party and included references to Stuxnet thus strengthening claims that Israel s security forces were responsible 133 In 2009 a year before Stuxnet was discovered Scott Borg of the United States Cyber Consequences Unit US CCU 134 suggested that Israel may prefer to mount a cyberattack rather than a military strike on Iran s nuclear facilities 111 In late 2010 Borg stated Israel certainly has the ability to create Stuxnet and there is little downside to such an attack because it would be virtually impossible to prove who did it So a tool like Stuxnet is Israel s obvious weapon of choice 135 Iran uses P 1 centrifuges at Natanz the design for which A Q Khan stole in 1976 and took to Pakistan His black market nuclear proliferation network sold P 1s to among other customers Iran Experts believe that Israel also somehow acquired P 1s and tested Stuxnet on the centrifuges installed at the Dimona facility that is part of its own nuclear program 61 The equipment may be from the United States which received P 1s from Libya s former nuclear program 136 61 Some have also cited several clues in the code such as a concealed reference to the word MYRTUS believed to refer to the Latin name myrtus of the Myrtle tree which in Hebrew is called hadassah Hadassah was the birth name of the former Jewish queen of Persia Queen Esther 137 138 However it may be that the MYRTUS reference is simply a misinterpreted reference to SCADA components known as RTUs Remote Terminal Units and that this reference is actually My RTUs a management feature of SCADA 139 Also the number 19790509 appears once in the code and may refer to the date 1979 May 09 the day Habib Elghanian a Persian Jew was executed in Tehran 67 140 141 Another date that appears in the code is 24 September 2007 the day that Iran s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University and made comments questioning the validity of the Holocaust 38 Such data is not conclusive since as noted by Symantec attackers would have the natural desire to implicate another party 67 United States edit There has also been reports on the involvement of the United States and its collaboration with Israel 142 143 with one report stating that there is vanishingly little doubt that it played a role in creating the worm 38 It has been reported that the United States under one of its most secret programs initiated by the Bush administration and accelerated by the Obama administration 144 has sought to destroy Iran s nuclear program by novel methods such as undermining Iranian computer systems A leaked diplomatic cable showed how the United States was advised to target Iran s nuclear abilities through covert sabotage 145 An article in The New York Times in January 2009 credited a then unspecified program with preventing an Israeli military attack on Iran where some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges 146 A Wired article claimed that Stuxnet is believed to have been created by the United States 147 Dutch historian Peter Koop speculated that the Tailored Access Operations could have developed Stuxnet possibly in collaboration with Israel 148 The fact that John Bumgarner a former intelligence officer and member of the United States Cyber Consequences Unit US CCU published an article prior to Stuxnet being discovered or deciphered that outlined a strategic cyber strike on centrifuges 149 and suggests that cyber attacks are permissible against nation states which are operating uranium enrichment programs that violate international treaties gives some credibility to these claims Bumgarner pointed out that the centrifuges used to process fuel for nuclear weapons are a key target for cybertage operations and that they can be made to destroy themselves by manipulating their rotational speeds 150 In a March 2012 interview with 60 Minutes retired US Air Force General Michael Hayden who served as director of both the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency while denying knowledge of who created Stuxnet said that he believed it had been a good idea but that it carried a downside in that it had legitimized the use of sophisticated cyber weapons designed to cause physical damage Hayden said There are those out there who can take a look at this and maybe even attempt to turn it to their own purposes In the same report Sean McGurk a former cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security noted that the Stuxnet source code could now be downloaded online and modified to be directed at new target systems Speaking of the Stuxnet creators he said They opened the box They demonstrated the capability It s not something that can be put back 151 Joint effort and other states and targets edit This section needs to be updated Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information June 2012 In April 2011 Iranian government official Gholam Reza Jalali stated that an investigation had concluded that the United States and Israel were behind the Stuxnet attack 152 Frank Rieger stated that three European countries intelligence agencies agreed that Stuxnet was a joint United States Israel effort The code for the Windows injector and the PLC payload differ in style likely implying collaboration Other experts believe that a US Israel cooperation is unlikely because the level of trust between the two countries intelligence and military establishments is not high 38 A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B Alexander stated And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid 2000s 153 China 154 Jordan and France are other possibilities and Siemens may have also participated 38 142 Langner speculated that the infection may have spread from USB drives belonging to Russian contractors since the Iranian targets were not accessible via the Internet 21 155 In 2019 it was reported that an Iranian mole working for Dutch intelligence at the behest of Israel and the CIA inserted the Stuxnet virus with a USB flash drive or convinced another person working at the Natanz facility to do so 156 157 Sandro Gaycken from the Free University Berlin argued that the attack on Iran was a ruse to distract from Stuxnet s real purpose According to him its broad dissemination in more than 100 000 industrial plants worldwide suggests a field test of a cyber weapon in different security cultures testing their preparedness resilience and reactions all highly valuable information for a cyberwar unit 158 The United Kingdom has denied involvement in the worm s creation 159 In July 2013 Edward Snowden claimed that Stuxnet was cooperatively developed by the United States and Israel 160 Deployment in North Korea edit According to a report by Reuters the NSA also tried to sabotage North Korea s nuclear program using a version of Stuxnet The operation was reportedly launched in tandem with the attack that targeted Iranian centrifuges in 2009 10 The North Korean nuclear program shares many similarities with the Iranian both having been developed with technology transferred by Pakistani nuclear scientist A Q Khan The effort failed however because North Korea s extreme secrecy and isolation made it impossible to introduce Stuxnet into the nuclear facility 161 Stuxnet 2 0 cyberattack edit In 2018 Gholamreza Jalali Iran s chief of the National Passive Defence Organisation NPDO claimed that his country fended off a Stuxnet like attack targeting the country s telecom infrastructure Iran s Telecommunications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi has since accused Israel of orchestrating the attack Iran plans to sue Israel through the International Court of Justice ICJ and is also willing to launch a retaliation attack if Israel does not desist 162 Related malware edit Stuxnet s Secret Twin edit A November 2013 article 163 in Foreign Policy magazine claims existence of an earlier much more sophisticated attack on the centrifuge complex at Natanz focused on increasing centrifuge failure rate over a long time period by stealthily inducing uranium hexafluoride gas overpressure incidents This malware was capable of spreading only by being physically installed probably by previously contaminated field equipment used by contractors working on Siemens control systems within the complex It is not clear whether this attack attempt was successful but it being followed by a different simpler and more conventional attack is indicative Duqu edit Main article Duqu On 1 September 2011 a new worm was found thought to be related to Stuxnet The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security CrySyS of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics analyzed the malware naming the threat Duqu 164 165 Symantec based on this report continued the analysis of the threat calling it nearly identical to Stuxnet but with a completely different purpose and published a detailed technical paper 166 The main component used in Duqu is designed to capture information 62 such as keystrokes and system information The exfiltrated data may be used to enable a future Stuxnet like attack On 28 December 2011 Kaspersky Lab s director of global research and analysis spoke to Reuters about recent research results showing that the platform Stuxnet and Duqu both originated in 2007 and is being referred to as Tilded due to the d at the beginning of the file names Also uncovered in this research was the possibility for three more variants based on the Tilded platform 167 Flame edit Main article Flame malware In May 2012 the new malware Flame was found thought to be related to Stuxnet 168 Researchers named the program Flame after the name of one of its modules 168 After analysing the code of Flame Kaspersky Lab said that there is a strong relationship between Flame and Stuxnet An early version of Stuxnet contained code to propagate infections via USB drives that is nearly identical to a Flame module that exploits the same vulnerability 169 Targeting military command control communications and intelligence edit Former U S Secretary of Defense William J Perry and Tom Z Collina Director of Policy at the Ploughshares Fund wrote that there are thousands and maybe millions of attacks each day on the U S military s use of the internet and similar DoD only communications If a cybersecurity attack on any nuclear weapon state does what the U S and Israel reportedly did to Iran with Stuxnet it could convince the leaders of that country that they were being attacked with nuclear weapons when they weren t This could lead them to start a nuclear war by mistake believing that they could lose the ability to respond appropriately if they waited for more information 170 If the country targeted with such a cybersecurity attack were India or Pakistan the resulting nuclear war would likely produce a nuclear autumn during which roughly a quarter of humanity most of whom were not directly impacted by nuclear explosions could starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner 171 If the United States Russia or China or maybe even the United Kingdom or France experienced such a cybersecurity attack the resulting nuclear war would likely produce a nuclear winter during which 98 percent of humanity would die of starvation if they did not succumb to something else sooner 172 relevant Perry and Collina also noted that a nuclear war by accident is much more likely than Russia launching a first strike on the United States They claimed that the world s major nuclear arsenals are focusing on the wrong problem They cited several sources to support this claim including a GAO study that found that many advanced weapon systems in the U S use commercial and free software without changing the default passwords Hackers working for the GAO were able to penetrate DoD systems undetected in part using default passwords found on the internet 173 relevant Media coverage editSince 2010 there has been extensive international media coverage on Stuxnet and its aftermath In early commentary The Economist pointed out that Stuxnet was a new kind of cyber attack 174 On 8 July 2011 Wired then published an article detailing how network security experts were able to decipher the origins of Stuxnet In that piece Kim Zetter claimed that Stuxnet s cost benefit ratio is still in question 175 Later commentators tended to focus on the strategic significance of Stuxnet as a cyber weapon Following the Wired piece Holger Stark called Stuxnet the first digital weapon of geopolitical importance it could change the way wars are fought 176 Meanwhile Eddie Walsh referred to Stuxnet as the world s newest high end asymmetric threat 177 Ultimately some claim that the extensive media coverage afforded to Stuxnet has only served as an advertisement for the vulnerabilities used by various cybercriminal groups 178 While that may be the case the media coverage has also increased awareness of cyber security threats Alex Gibney s 2016 documentary Zero Days covers the phenomenon around Stuxnet 179 A zero day also known as 0 day vulnerability is a computer software vulnerability that is unknown to or unaddressed by those who should be interested in mitigating the vulnerability including the vendor of the target software Until the vulnerability is mitigated hackers can exploit it to adversely affect computer programs data additional computers or a network In 2016 it was revealed that General James Cartwright the former head of the U S Strategic Command had leaked information related to Stuxnet He later pleaded guilty for lying to FBI agents pursuing an investigation into the leak 180 181 On 17 January 2017 he was granted a full pardon in this case by President Obama thus expunging his conviction In popular culture editBesides the aforementioned Alex Gibney documentary Zero Days 2016 which looks into the malware and the cyberwarfare surrounding it other works which reference Stuxnet include In Castle season 8 episode 18 Backstabber Stuxnet is revealed to have been fictionally created by MI6 and a version of it is used to take down the London power grid Trojan Horse is a novel written by Windows utility writer and novelist Mark Russinovich It features the usage of the Stuxnet virus as a main plot line for the story and the attempt of Iran to bypass it In Ghost in the Shell Arise Stuxnet is the named type of computer virus which infected Kusanagi and Manamura allowing false memories to be implanted In July 2017 MRSA Mat Zo released a track named Stuxnet through Hospital Records In Ubisoft s 2013 video game Tom Clancy s Splinter Cell Blacklist the protagonist Sam Fisher makes use of a mobile airborne headquarters Paladin which is said at one point within the game s story mode to have been targeted by a Stuxnet style virus causing its systems to fail and the plane to careen towards the ocean and would have crashed without Fisher s intervening 182 In Michael Mann s 2015 movie Blackhat the code shown as belonging to a virus used by a hacker to cause the coolant pumps explosion in a nuclear plant in Chai Wan Hong Kong is actual Stuxnet decompiled code In the third episode of Star Trek Discovery Context Is for Kings characters identify a segment of code as being part of an experimental transportation system The code shown is decompiled Stuxnet code 183 Much of the same code is shown in the eighth episode of The Expanse Pyre this time as a visual representation of a diagnostic exploit breaking into the control software for nuclear missiles See also editAdvanced persistent threat DigiNotar Killer poke List of security hacking incidents Mahdi malware Natanz Nitro Zeus Operation High Roller Operation Merlin Pin control attack Programmable logic controller Regin malware Stars virus Tailored Access Operations Vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack Zero 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2020 This suggests an annual percentage increase of 1 26 percent which would give an estimate of 7 1 billion people in 2013 when Helfand s report predicted the deaths of two billion people from a nuclear autumn Two billion is 28 percent of 7 1 billion which is just over a quarter See also Owen B Toon Alan Robock Michael Mills Lili Xia May 2017 Asia Treads the Nuclear Path Unaware That Self Assured Destruction Would Result from Nuclear War PDF The Journal of Asian Studies 76 02 2 437 456 doi 10 1017 S0021911817000080 ISSN 0021 9118 Wikidata Q58262021 This claim was made by Daniel Ellsberg who was a nuclear war planner for US Presidents Eisenhower Kennedy Johnson and Nixon before releasing the Pentagon Papers which were published in 1971 See Daniel Ellsberg Amy Goodman Juan Gonzalez 6 December 2017 Daniel Ellsberg Reveals He was a Nuclear War Planner Warns of Nuclear Winter amp Global Starvation Democracy Now Wikidata Q64226035 Weapon Systems Cybersecurity DoD Just Beginning to Grapple with Scale of Vulnerabilities PDF Government Accountability Office October 2018 Wikidata Q102046879 The Meaning of Stuxnet The Economist 30 September 2010 Archived from the original on 30 March 2015 Retrieved 18 April 2015 Kim Zetter 8 July 2011 How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet the Most Menacing Malware in History Wired Archived from the original on 9 March 2017 Retrieved 11 March 2017 Holger Stark 8 August 2011 Mossad s Miracle Weapon Stuxnet Virus Opens New Era of Cyber War Der Spiegel Archived from the original on 12 April 2015 Retrieved 18 April 2015 Eddie Walsh 1 January 2012 2011 The year of domestic cyber threat Al Jazeera English Archived from the original on 18 April 2015 Retrieved 18 April 2015 Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky 5 October 2010 Sality amp Stuxnet Not Such a Strange Coincidence Kaspersky Lab Archived from the original on 18 April 2015 Retrieved 18 April 2015 Ball James 16 February 2016 U S Hacked into Iran s Critical Civilian Infrastructure For Massive Cyberattack New Film Claims BuzzFeed Archived from the original on 19 July 2017 Retrieved 17 May 2017 Savage Charlie 17 October 2016 James Cartwright Ex General Pleads Guilty in Leak Case The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Archived from the original on 12 January 2017 Retrieved 27 December 2016 World War Three by Mistake The New Yorker 23 December 2016 Archived from the original on 27 December 2016 Retrieved 27 December 2016 Splinter Cell Blacklist Mission 10 American Fuel Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 via www youtube com According to Star Trek Discovery Starfleet still runs Microsoft Windows The Verge 3 October 2017 Archived from the original on 11 January 2019 Retrieved 11 January 2019 Further reading editLangner Ralph March 2011 Ralph Langner Cracking Stuxnet a 21st century cyber weapon TED Archived from the original on 1 February 2014 Retrieved 13 May 2011 The short path from cyber missiles to dirty digital bombs Blog Langner Communications GmbH 26 December 2010 Archived from the original on 19 April 2017 Retrieved 13 May 2011 Ralph Langner s Stuxnet Deep Dive Archived 17 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine Langner Ralph November 2013 To Kill a Centrifuge A Technical Analysis of What Stuxnet s Creators Tried to Achieve PDF Report Archived PDF from the original on 13 June 2016 Retrieved 26 November 2013 Falliere Nicolas 21 September 2010 Exploring Stuxnet s PLC Infection Process Blogs Security Response Symantec Archived from the original on 21 June 2021 Retrieved 13 May 2011 Stuxnet Questions and Answers News from the Lab blog F Secure 1 October 2010 Archived from the original on 5 May 2021 Retrieved 13 May 2011 Dang Bruce Ferrie Peter 28 December 2010 27C3 Adventures in analyzing Stuxnet Chaos Computer Club e V Archived from the original on 11 October 2015 Retrieved 13 May 2011 Russinovich Mark 30 March 2011 Analyzing a Stuxnet Infection with the Sysinternals Tools Part 1 Mark s Blog Microsoft Corporation MSDN Blogs Archived from the original on 23 April 2011 Retrieved 13 May 2011 Zetter Kim 11 July 2011 How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet the Most Menacing Malware in History Threat Level Blog Wired Archived from the original on 28 March 2014 Retrieved 11 July 2011 Kroft Steve 4 March 2012 Stuxnet Computer worm opens new era of warfare 60 Minutes CBS News Archived from the original on 15 October 2013 Retrieved 4 March 2012 Sanger David E 1 June 2012 Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran The New York Times Archived from the original on 17 September 2022 Retrieved 1 June 2012 Kim Zetter Countdown to Zero Day Stuxnet and the Launch of the World s First Digital Weapon New York Crown Publishing Group 2014 ISBN 978 0 7704 3617 9 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stuxnet fanny bmp at Securelist fanny bmp source at GitHub Stuxnet code at Internet Archive Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Stuxnet amp oldid 1207294371, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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