7 ms·

Stuxnet sibling theory surges after Iran says nuke facility shut down

53 points by beermonster 6y ago

LatteLazy 6y ago
This is interesting because it is much less subtle than stuxnet. One of the core features of stuxnet was that it broke centrifuges in a way that looked like (I think) manufacturering faults. That's why it went on so long and did so much damage: no one thought to look for it. It even faked logs I believe. This incident seems to be the opposite: a big one day event timed to make a splash and be quite obvious...
- dijit 6y ago
  STUXNet, by all accounts, was also not very subtle though. They packed the thing with so many exploits that the virus was ubiquitous and very obviously nation-state produced.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Once you knew to look for / find the virus, it's obviously a very sophisticated piece of work. The point is that it did its damage in a very under-the-radar way so it took a long time for anyone to even realize what they were dealing with.
Vaderv 6y ago
The Israelis committed an act of Nuclear Terrorism
thendrill 6y ago
I can offer a different theory. You have a bunch of overworked underpaid and under qualified engineers in charge of deploying a nuclear facility with a ton of political pressure, and some crazy ass deadline. On day one, your systems compeletley fold... Because of reasons. Do you admit fault and face political regime consequences? Or... Do you blame it on a "system fault caused by hackers"
- tgv 6y ago
  I think the evidence for your theory is just as strong as it is for a "stuxnet sibling". This is absolutely non-news.
adam-a 6y ago
Interesting to see the contrast in coverage from a European outlet: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears-confirm-cyberattack-iran-nuclear-facility https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears... "Israel appeared to confirm" vs "evidence is thin".
- samjmck 6y ago
  Aren't both websites British?
  - will0 6y ago
    Yes
  - adam-a 6y ago
    Ah I didn't realise that. My mistake
supergirl 6y ago
seems to me that whenever iran is getting closer to some favorable deal with the west there is some attack. pretty sure it's a provocation so Iran counter attacks and loses the deal.
totalZero 6y ago
Why does Iran announce these situations? Covering them up would seem more typical of a secretive nuclear program.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Most countries, if they could, would like to advance one narrative on the world stage and a separate one to their citizens. Perhaps this isn't aimed at us westerners - and instead it's aimed at Iranians. The message being "Yet more evidence that our country is under constant assault by the forces of evil who are threatened by our growing strength. They are the cause of any problems you see, support our homeland security and military" There's also a message for possible allies in the region: "As you can see, Western countries don't respect our sovereignty, any respect they claim to have for yours is an illusion, show solidarity with us fellow autocratic religious oil-producing countries"
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Except for the "evil" part, isn't that exactly what's happening?
    - sofixa 6y ago
      Yep. And "evil" is entirely subjective, one can easily say that Israel is evil for human rights and international law violations, and a similar argument can easily be made against the US, Turkey, UK, France, Saudi Arabia Iran as well.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      I mean, the "growing strength" part and the "cause of any problems" part would be pretty farfetched in any serious conversation. Iran has been on its back foot ever since Obama left the picture because US policy got far more hawkish, and the fact that Iran shot down a passenger plane and tried to lie about it was a self-own. The Iranian people don't seem to blame foreign governments, they blame the Islamic regime. Oil prices have bumped back up but their crash was damaging to Iran's revenue expectations. The country was hit very hard by the virus and it's hard to blame the West for something that came from Wuhan. The government there doesn't choose its narrative based on what's true or believable. When you think of it as a mafia that controls the country and presents a caricature of representative government while stealing and killing, things start to make more sense.
jonplackett 6y ago
Anyone think Israel were a bit too quick to say (or at least imply) it was a cyber weapon? “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." - Churchill
ghostshell89 6y ago
The Israelis have pretty much come out and said that they were responsible. They’re trying to sabatoge talks because Israel would collapse if it didn’t have an external enemy.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Iran might collapse, but Israel wouldn't. They might focus more on the internal corruption though.
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
how can any american or israeli support saying "stuxnet" in a normal way of conversation when it is a weapon used against another country with disastrous effects all the while latching on to "wiping israel off the map" which is something i'm told the guy didn't say.
- ghostshell89 6y ago
  Both America and Israel are settler-colonial states, this is par for the course.
- elmo2you 6y ago
  For starters, because it's "might makes right" and double blatant standards all the way down. Nothing particularly unique, for almost any empire in history has operated worked that way. Just as almost any empire eventually had to resort to increasingly more covert, corrupt and criminal enterprises to support itself. At some point, it inevitably will all come crashing down. In the case of America, several generation will ask themselves how they could have been so dumb to let it get that far. No entirely fair, because their parents didn't really have the power to influence (let alone stop) any of it. Not without completely destroying the same system that also supported their way of life. Many people in the Soviet Union at some point knew at some point that the system was doomed, but nobody know how to change that reality for the better. A lot can be learned from reading books written by Russians, about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Or books by Germans, after the end of World War II. In fairness, it's hard to blame current day Americans for not clearly seeing what's going on, considering the level of cultural, institutionalized and commercial brainwashing (including deliberate division and diversion) that has been part of every aspect of life there, for decades (if not a century). Still, there will come a day that Americans will have a rude awakening about reality and how those who run their country (be that government or private interests) have ruined their future and well being for a long time to come, just as the Russians and Germans once had.
fny 6y ago
"Few nations like the idea of Iran enhancing its nuclear capabilities" Lol. No nation in over a decade likes this idea except for maybe North Korea. Sure Israel has always been the most vocal, but Iran having the bomb is an international liability. Even the Sunni Arabs stripes have changed. Common enemies make strange bedfellows. Also, the Iranians have been willing to flex against their neighbors more recently. See the 2019 Abqaiq–Khurais attack. My bet is that there's likely been a lot of international cooperation behind this and every other attempt. The Israelis likely take the blame to help others save face. Consider the US/EU/Russians/Turks have called out Israelis after umpteen assassinations. No punitive actions have materialize. Instead, trade has flourished with the aforementioned parties, and now we have the Abraham Accords, and the Saudi's might even open their door.
- swarnie_ 6y ago
  Why shouldn't Iran have access to nuclear power, or nuclear weapons for that matter?
  - ghostshell89 6y ago
    Its actually quite weird. Israel, France, the UK, and the USA all saying Iran cannot have nuclear weapons while all having nuclear weapons themselves (and the USA having used it on two civilian populations).
    - swarnie_ 6y ago
      That's my point. Only one nation has ever demonstrated and itchy trigger finger when it comes to these weapons. Maybe you could make a case that having these weapons would make them more hostile/expansionist/aggressive. It certainly has merit considering what the US has been up to since 1945.
    - tome 6y ago
      It's not weird at all. It is what Iran (and almost every country) voluntarily agreed to under the terms of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...
tester34 6y ago
Could some ELI5 what's going on with Iran over last like 3 decades? why they're described like a dangerous country? why there are fights 24/7?
- swarnie_ 6y ago
  Presumably A) They don't want to play economic ball with Uncle Sam. B) The country can't be conquered by conventional means so can "act out" as much as they like. C) They aren't really that bad, US propaganda is just really, really effective.
  - tester34 6y ago
    What do you mean? >B) The country can't be conquered by conventional means so can "act out" as much as they like.
    - chefkoch 6y ago
      The geography is really good to defend the country. It's not like iraq where you can drive your tank to the capital in 48 hours. Also they can easily close the street of hormus, shutting down the oil supply from the region.
  - KMag 6y ago
    D) They refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, and keep vowing to wipe it and its citizens off the map. Hopefully it's mostly rhetoric, but... E) Their Revolutionary Guard is extremely powerful politically. It's not clear the civilian government is capable of fully reigning in the Revolutionary Guard, and the Revolutionary Guard's political power is propped up by the prospect of war.
- sofixa 6y ago
  You have to start earlier than that. In the 1950s, Iran became a brutal dictatorship under their Shah ( who got there with an Allied-sponsored coup during WW2) via a CIA and MI6 sponsored coup against the democratically elected PM, who wanted to nationalise British oil interests to fund social programs and improve Iran. The Shah brutally supresed opposition, until one day it became too much and in the 1970s a revolution by a communist and Islamist coalition overthrew the old regime ( the islamists came up ahead and Iran became an Islamic Republic). The US has been against them from that moment on, and Iran has hated them for enabling the Shah, and continuing meddling ever since. ( Bar a small and very illegal episode known as the Iran-Contra affair, where the US sold weapons and spare parts to Iran in exchange for off-books cash, which was funneled into the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua, to circumvent US Congress restrictions on help to the latter) It's fascinating reading, i encourage you to look up the details yourself.
PicassoCTs 6y ago
Nuclear weapons have been proofen to work as a deterrent for meddling super powers. What i do not understand is why the capability to build them has to be developed locally? Buy in bulk in north korea..

53 points by beermonster 6y ago

This is interesting because it is much less subtle than stuxnet. One of the core features of stuxnet was that it broke centrifuges in a way that looked like (I think) manufacturering faults. That's why it went on so long and did so much damage: no one thought to look for it. It even faked logs I believe. This incident seems to be the opposite: a big one day event timed to make a splash and be quite obvious...

dijit 6y ago
STUXNet, by all accounts, was also not very subtle though. They packed the thing with so many exploits that the virus was ubiquitous and very obviously nation-state produced.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Once you knew to look for / find the virus, it's obviously a very sophisticated piece of work. The point is that it did its damage in a very under-the-radar way so it took a long time for anyone to even realize what they were dealing with.

Vaderv 6y ago

The Israelis committed an act of Nuclear Terrorism

thendrill 6y ago

I can offer a different theory. You have a bunch of overworked underpaid and under qualified engineers in charge of deploying a nuclear facility with a ton of political pressure, and some crazy ass deadline. On day one, your systems compeletley fold... Because of reasons. Do you admit fault and face political regime consequences? Or... Do you blame it on a "system fault caused by hackers"

tgv 6y ago
I think the evidence for your theory is just as strong as it is for a "stuxnet sibling". This is absolutely non-news.

adam-a 6y ago

Interesting to see the contrast in coverage from a European outlet: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears-confirm-cyberattack-iran-nuclear-facility https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears... "Israel appeared to confirm" vs "evidence is thin".

samjmck 6y ago
Aren't both websites British?
- will0 6y ago
  Yes
- adam-a 6y ago
  Ah I didn't realise that. My mistake

supergirl 6y ago

seems to me that whenever iran is getting closer to some favorable deal with the west there is some attack. pretty sure it's a provocation so Iran counter attacks and loses the deal.

totalZero 6y ago

Why does Iran announce these situations? Covering them up would seem more typical of a secretive nuclear program.

michaelt 6y ago
Most countries, if they could, would like to advance one narrative on the world stage and a separate one to their citizens. Perhaps this isn't aimed at us westerners - and instead it's aimed at Iranians. The message being "Yet more evidence that our country is under constant assault by the forces of evil who are threatened by our growing strength. They are the cause of any problems you see, support our homeland security and military" There's also a message for possible allies in the region: "As you can see, Western countries don't respect our sovereignty, any respect they claim to have for yours is an illusion, show solidarity with us fellow autocratic religious oil-producing countries"
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Except for the "evil" part, isn't that exactly what's happening?
  - sofixa 6y ago
    Yep. And "evil" is entirely subjective, one can easily say that Israel is evil for human rights and international law violations, and a similar argument can easily be made against the US, Turkey, UK, France, Saudi Arabia Iran as well.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    I mean, the "growing strength" part and the "cause of any problems" part would be pretty farfetched in any serious conversation. Iran has been on its back foot ever since Obama left the picture because US policy got far more hawkish, and the fact that Iran shot down a passenger plane and tried to lie about it was a self-own. The Iranian people don't seem to blame foreign governments, they blame the Islamic regime. Oil prices have bumped back up but their crash was damaging to Iran's revenue expectations. The country was hit very hard by the virus and it's hard to blame the West for something that came from Wuhan. The government there doesn't choose its narrative based on what's true or believable. When you think of it as a mafia that controls the country and presents a caricature of representative government while stealing and killing, things start to make more sense.

jonplackett 6y ago

Anyone think Israel were a bit too quick to say (or at least imply) it was a cyber weapon? “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." - Churchill

ghostshell89 6y ago

The Israelis have pretty much come out and said that they were responsible. They’re trying to sabatoge talks because Israel would collapse if it didn’t have an external enemy.

tomjen3 6y ago
Iran might collapse, but Israel wouldn't. They might focus more on the internal corruption though.

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

how can any american or israeli support saying "stuxnet" in a normal way of conversation when it is a weapon used against another country with disastrous effects all the while latching on to "wiping israel off the map" which is something i'm told the guy didn't say.

ghostshell89 6y ago
Both America and Israel are settler-colonial states, this is par for the course.
elmo2you 6y ago
For starters, because it's "might makes right" and double blatant standards all the way down. Nothing particularly unique, for almost any empire in history has operated worked that way. Just as almost any empire eventually had to resort to increasingly more covert, corrupt and criminal enterprises to support itself. At some point, it inevitably will all come crashing down. In the case of America, several generation will ask themselves how they could have been so dumb to let it get that far. No entirely fair, because their parents didn't really have the power to influence (let alone stop) any of it. Not without completely destroying the same system that also supported their way of life. Many people in the Soviet Union at some point knew at some point that the system was doomed, but nobody know how to change that reality for the better. A lot can be learned from reading books written by Russians, about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Or books by Germans, after the end of World War II. In fairness, it's hard to blame current day Americans for not clearly seeing what's going on, considering the level of cultural, institutionalized and commercial brainwashing (including deliberate division and diversion) that has been part of every aspect of life there, for decades (if not a century). Still, there will come a day that Americans will have a rude awakening about reality and how those who run their country (be that government or private interests) have ruined their future and well being for a long time to come, just as the Russians and Germans once had.

fny 6y ago

"Few nations like the idea of Iran enhancing its nuclear capabilities" Lol. No nation in over a decade likes this idea except for maybe North Korea. Sure Israel has always been the most vocal, but Iran having the bomb is an international liability. Even the Sunni Arabs stripes have changed. Common enemies make strange bedfellows. Also, the Iranians have been willing to flex against their neighbors more recently. See the 2019 Abqaiq–Khurais attack. My bet is that there's likely been a lot of international cooperation behind this and every other attempt. The Israelis likely take the blame to help others save face. Consider the US/EU/Russians/Turks have called out Israelis after umpteen assassinations. No punitive actions have materialize. Instead, trade has flourished with the aforementioned parties, and now we have the Abraham Accords, and the Saudi's might even open their door.

swarnie_ 6y ago
Why shouldn't Iran have access to nuclear power, or nuclear weapons for that matter?
- ghostshell89 6y ago
  Its actually quite weird. Israel, France, the UK, and the USA all saying Iran cannot have nuclear weapons while all having nuclear weapons themselves (and the USA having used it on two civilian populations).
  - swarnie_ 6y ago
    That's my point. Only one nation has ever demonstrated and itchy trigger finger when it comes to these weapons. Maybe you could make a case that having these weapons would make them more hostile/expansionist/aggressive. It certainly has merit considering what the US has been up to since 1945.
  - tome 6y ago
    It's not weird at all. It is what Iran (and almost every country) voluntarily agreed to under the terms of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...

tester34 6y ago

Could some ELI5 what's going on with Iran over last like 3 decades? why they're described like a dangerous country? why there are fights 24/7?

swarnie_ 6y ago
Presumably A) They don't want to play economic ball with Uncle Sam. B) The country can't be conquered by conventional means so can "act out" as much as they like. C) They aren't really that bad, US propaganda is just really, really effective.
- tester34 6y ago
  What do you mean? >B) The country can't be conquered by conventional means so can "act out" as much as they like.
  - chefkoch 6y ago
    The geography is really good to defend the country. It's not like iraq where you can drive your tank to the capital in 48 hours. Also they can easily close the street of hormus, shutting down the oil supply from the region.
- KMag 6y ago
  D) They refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, and keep vowing to wipe it and its citizens off the map. Hopefully it's mostly rhetoric, but... E) Their Revolutionary Guard is extremely powerful politically. It's not clear the civilian government is capable of fully reigning in the Revolutionary Guard, and the Revolutionary Guard's political power is propped up by the prospect of war.
sofixa 6y ago
You have to start earlier than that. In the 1950s, Iran became a brutal dictatorship under their Shah ( who got there with an Allied-sponsored coup during WW2) via a CIA and MI6 sponsored coup against the democratically elected PM, who wanted to nationalise British oil interests to fund social programs and improve Iran. The Shah brutally supresed opposition, until one day it became too much and in the 1970s a revolution by a communist and Islamist coalition overthrew the old regime ( the islamists came up ahead and Iran became an Islamic Republic). The US has been against them from that moment on, and Iran has hated them for enabling the Shah, and continuing meddling ever since. ( Bar a small and very illegal episode known as the Iran-Contra affair, where the US sold weapons and spare parts to Iran in exchange for off-books cash, which was funneled into the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua, to circumvent US Congress restrictions on help to the latter) It's fascinating reading, i encourage you to look up the details yourself.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

Nuclear weapons have been proofen to work as a deterrent for meddling super powers. What i do not understand is why the capability to build them has to be developed locally? Buy in bulk in north korea..