A Look at Stuxnet, the World's First Digital Weapon

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/

by ghosh • 12 years ago

54 35 12 years ago

teamhappy4• 12 years ago

This is quite important for the current debates we're having. If you look at the news media, or the Hacker News front page for that matter, you stumble upon articles accusing China and Russia to hack into foreign governments regularly. Similarly, China and other asian countries are often accused of adding backdoors to their hardware (e.g., routers, switches, telco equipment). The only* backdoors ever found in hardware were found in hardware build by US-based companies. And, of course, Stuxnet is the first example of governments (USA and Israel) attacking a foreign country's critical infrastructure with a "digital weapon." I'm not sure how to feel about that.

*I'm not sure this is still true today

---

Let me add that, when it comes to topics like this one we should probably stick to what we know for sure. Figuring out if code is a backdoor or a bug is already hard enough (not always though). The same goes for attacks. Governments accuse each other of doing a lot of things, and fortunately, sometimes they even admit that they make these claims up.

Oh and please don't take my word for any of this. There are well known and respected people who speak very openly about these topics on conferences like CCC, DEFCON, etc.

kokomo2• 12 years ago

I 'heard' that stuxnet was responsible for fouling fukushima (scrambling reactor controls) and similarly beta tested at a US reactor in the south somewhere... but I 'heard' it on the interwebs

kokomo2• 12 years ago

i think it's been used against Iran's nuclear program as well?

Dove4• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how to feel about that.

I know how I feel about it: I would much rather wars were fought with code and robots than with tanks and bayonets. And I would rather those than CBRN weapons!

Certain countries were going to neutralize that facility. Had to, for survival reasons. The only real question is . . . how? They could have picked a full-scale war. They could have precision-bombed the facility. They could have assassinated the workers. These solutions have all been chosen in the past, in similar scenarios. By comparison with the other options available, Stuxnet achieved the goal in an extremely civilized manner, with no loss of life.

They say the purpose of war is to kill people and break things, but really it isn't -- it's to accomplish objectives, to make people do what you want. The killing and breaking is really just a way to make objectives happen. And the better targeted your weapons are, the better you can make what you want to happen happen with less and less extra mess. Cyberweapons are some of the best targeted things ever dreamed of in the history of warfare. You can disable infrastructure without going within miles of harming a human on either side, military or otherwise. I am a big fan.

hawkice2• 12 years ago

To give a concrete example of your excellent point:

You could hack into missile guidance systems and have the missiles all route to the Pacific ocean -- having the boards fritz-out is a MUCH less powerful weapon, blowing up the factory for missiles is much less powerful than that. I'm sure if Stuxnet could make the machinery seem to work but not give them good enough materials to build anything worthwhile, (1) those engineers would have done that, and (2) the public would still not know about it.

This is perhaps the best argument for cyber-weapons, too (the intelligence/espionage element): it inverts the incentives. You build a gun, I need a better gun. You have a bomb, I need a bigger bomb that kills more people and destroys more and more. But cyber-weapons? Best cyber-weapons change the very least possible to accomplish the actual objective.

Breaking the ENIGMA, for instance, didn't change every single tactical choice for the Allies. To do so would eliminate a large portion of the benefits.

teamhappy4• 12 years ago

I would much rather wars were fought with code and robots than with tanks and bayonets.

I don't mind Robot Wars either, but last time I checked we have plenty of robots killing nothing but people.

Certain countries were going to neutralize that facility. Had to, for survival reasons.

Really? I'm pretty sure Iran's nuclear facilities are operating and everybody in the region is still alive and kicking.

I don't mean to offend you, but when you use phrases like "had to" and "for survival reasons" the argument is pretty much over anyway. Furthermore, even if it were true, chances are you and me wouldn't know about it.

I am a big fan.

I bet you are.

wavefunction• 12 years ago

Like civilians don't need "infrastructure" or "aren't harmed" by its loss... I'd say stick to your day-job or whatever.

Drone warfare is a horrible new twist on the human tradition of killing each other over pettiness. There is nothing good about it.

kingzain2• 12 years ago

I had to read your comment a few times to make sure I was getting the gist of it correctly. Here's what I understood: you are advocating cyber warfare, and are a big fan of it. I understand your point about handling the situation with no loss of life. Great. But advocating war, even if it's cyber war? Wow.

Have you given a thought to this scenario: while deploying the virus, they made a mistake in their code, that leads to a nuclear meltdown causing an explosion, destroying millions of lives and causing a worldwide phenomenon.

Or how about the drone version cyber warfare mentioned by one of the commenters below?

Or let's say the stuxnet virus fell into the hands of a malicious party and they modified it to take down the national grid. Can you imagine the number of accidents that would cause?

Or maybe I'm just a fool and totally misunderstood your comment.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

Stuxnet didn't work though. Sure, it very likely damaged some of Iran's Uranium enrichment centrifuges and set their program back by months perhaps, but those months have passed. Iran has a fully capable Uranium enrichment infrastructure. They have the enrichment capacity to build bombs within a matter of months at most. All they need to do is take their existing Uranium stockpiles and run it through their existing enrichment infrastructure. Claims that it would be "oh so difficult" for them to build bombs are Iranian propaganda at best.

Iran has been very savvy here. They've built the capacity to become a nuclear weapons power on a moment's notice without actually putting weapons in service or having nuclear weapons tests. So far they've avoided the worst negative consequences of acquiring nuclear weapons.

pimlottc• 12 years ago

The only* backdoors ever found in hardware were found in hardware build by US-based companies.

What was the backdoor, can you provide a link?

xenophonf• 12 years ago

No one's absolutely certain, but the following article makes a pretty good case for Crypto AG:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080101082631/http://www.inteld...

Edited to add:

I tried chasing down a few of the links mentioned in the comments of https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors..., but I hit some dead ends and lack time to give you further detail. Sorry about that. As far as I can tell, the original report comes from Der Spiegel.

kbart• 12 years ago

Another one: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/sn...

cafard• 12 years ago

What about the bogus code that supposedly led to a Soviet gas pipeline explosion years ago?

eli• 12 years ago

I thought those were more like faulty engineering blueprints

dmckeon• 12 years ago

Looks more like SCADA software than plans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage

yuhong• 12 years ago

One interesting thing about Stuxnet is that it targeted Win2000 but was only discovered just after it went out of support.

teamhappy4• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how relevant this is given that people claim the purpose of Stuxnet was to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Facilities like that usually aren't allowed to install software updates anyway. The reason is certification. They install certified software on a machine, and then it gets locked away and nobody is allowed to touch it. Then again, I don't know if this is true for Iran as much as it is for western countries.

ganzuul• 12 years ago

...So Microsoft would have maintained code to circumvent detection? Is that the correlation?

dutchievandyk• 12 years ago

"An look"? Not a native speaker, but shouldn't it be "A look"?

arh68• 12 years ago

I imagine the short limit to titles' lengths forced an omission: An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet...

dang2• 12 years ago

It certainly should. Thanks—fixed.

transpy• 12 years ago

I have lost the ability to read a long piece. I feel frustrated when I go to the news site and I am presented with a 'narrative' that seems to hide the real information. I need a paragraph that tells me straight forward what this weapon is about, not a long, obfuscated narrative. It's my fault, I'm not complaining.

presumeaway• 12 years ago

I think I know why you're getting down-voted, but it's an interesting and real issue.

If you go a while, mostly digesting only tiny chunks of information, your brain optimizes around that and eventually becomes bad at dealing with longer narratives. (Aside: sometimes those narratives are worthwhile, other times they seem like they're just filler to make editors and publishers happy. But that's beside the point.)

It's also something we seem to be losing as a society.

The good news is, at least in my own experience, it's a skill we can develop (and it's closely related to attention span). When I buckle down and read complex texts for non-Internet periods of time (20-30 minutes), I quickly regain my speed and comprehension. But I find it important to deliberately exercise that part of my brain.

lcedp• 12 years ago

I second that whole-heartedly. Sometimes google/ddg/wikipedia gives the paragraph you are talking about:

Stuxnet is a computer worm that was discovered in June 2010. It was designed to attack industrial Programmable Logic Controllers or PLCs. PLCs allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Exploiting four zero-day flaws, 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. Stuxnet's design and architecture are not domain-specific and it could be tailored as a platform for attacking modern SCADA and PLC systems, the majority of which reside in Europe, Japan and the US.

Now I know what the hack Stuxnet is. Quite interesting but I'm not feeling like going into details - time saved.

daveriess• 12 years ago

Here's one of the Siemens forum threads where apparently stux is first encountered by engineers.

https://www.automation.siemens.com/forum/guests/PostShow.asp...

skaevola• 12 years ago

Wow... forget dog, I guess nobody on the internet knows if you're an Iranian nuclear engineer.

A Look at Stuxnet, the World's First Digital Weapon

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