Posted on 09/29/2010 5:52:44 AM PDT by Errant
Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus. None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany. The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.
One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."
Looking beyond Iran's predicament, he wondered whether the people responsible for planting Stuxnet in Iran - and apparently continuing to offload information from its sensitive systems - have the technology for stopping its rampage. "My impression," he said, "is that somebody outside Iran has partial control at least on its spread. Can this body stop malworm in its tracks or kill it? We don't have that information at present, he said.
As it is, the Iranian officials who turned outside for help were described by another of the experts they approached as alarmed and frustrated. It has dawned on them that the trouble cannot be waved away overnight but is around for the long haul. Finding a credible specialist with the magic code for ridding them of the cyber enemy could take several months. After their own attempts to defeat Stuxnet backfired, all the Iranians can do now is to sit back and hope for the best, helpless to predict the worm's next target and which other of their strategic industries will go down or be robbed of its secrets next.
While Tehran has given out several conflicting figures on the systems and networks struck by the malworm - 30,000 to 45,000 industrial units - debkafile's sources cite security experts as putting the figure much higher, in the region of millions. If this is true, then this cyber weapon attack on Iran would be the greatest ever.
Eat worms, terror clan!
Debka... < eyeroll > ....
DEBKA - Hope it is true.
Excellent weapon, worth every penny. If we just keep updating this virus, it would be much cheaper than a whole nuclear arsenal.
Mike
“The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not ‘irritating’ the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch.”
sort of like picking a fight with 4chan. Actually this does sort of sound like them. I wonder what the Iranians did to tick them off?
Don’t bring a mullah to a malware fight.
DEBKA has been more right than wrong.
This worm can be defeated by plugging your AC power into a 440v, 3 phase electric circuit. Or, to make it even quicker, place a bobbie pin into the nearest AC outlet.
As the worm turns
If this was the bubba administration he would send help.
O might send help yet.
What an irony... all this talk of striking Iran militarily and the angst of whether Israel may launch said attack, then for Iran to get flanked by something like this... Ha... Ha-ha.... bwaa-haaaahahahahahahahahahah.
Ask allah for help, you bunch of terrorist ragheads.
as long as it eats Iranian networks and doesnt burrow into other world networks .....
While I hope this works I fear containment
This thing came in on the net I suppose. Only stand alone systems with no net connections will survive and even then it may be spread to those by dissidents. They want a 10th century lifestyle in Iran and now they will get it. Just deserts!
Someone opened up a can of worms on them. Wait’ll someone opens up a can of whoopass.
Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians.
This is getting interesting. Tinfoil interesting. Is it Israel? Is it China practicing to wipe out our communications? It sure looks like somebody doesn’t like Iran! :)
Spread by USB thumb drive containing sexually explicit pictures of camels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.