Suspicion in Iran that Stuxnet caused Revolutionary Guards base explosions

lodewijk andré de la porte lodewijkadlp at gmail.com
Thu Nov 24 16:00:10 PST 2011


Personally I found it shocking an operating system without proper security
precautions was used for the centrifuges. If I'd tell people nuclear
warheads [run on windows | are controlled using windows] they'd laugh. I
also think it's curious that it'd take half a year to cleanse a computer
system of a virus, just re-installing whatever software runs on it would
clear anything right out! Either people are really bad at managing their
computer systems or some really bad design has been adopted.

Let's just hope the Chinese don't make the western world nuke itself.

2011/11/24 Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>

> (I treat this as conspiracy theory for the moment, but it's fairly
> likely Israel had a hand in this)
>
> http://debka.com/article/21496/
>
> Suspicion in Iran that Stuxnet caused Revolutionary Guards base explosions
>
> DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 18, 2011, 2:29 PM (GMT+02:00)
>
> Tags:  Stuxnet   Iran nuclear   Iran's Revolutionary Guards   missiles
> Duqu
>
> Iran's Sejil 2 ballistic missile.
>
> Is the Stuxnet computer malworm back on the warpath in Iran?
>
> Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion last Saturday, Nov. 12
> of
> the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir
> base point increasingly to a technical fault originating in the computer
> system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of
> Iran's
> ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36
> officers killed in the blast which rocked Tehran 46 kilometers away.
>
> (Tehran reported 17 deaths although 36 funerals took place.)
>
> Since the disaster, experts have run tests on missiles of the same type as
> Sejil 2 and on their launching mechanisms.
>
> debkafile's military and Iranian sources disclose three pieces of
> information
> coming out of the early IRGC probe: 1.  Maj. Gen. Moghaddam had gathered
> Iran's top missile experts around the Sejil 2 to show them a new type of
> warhead which could also carry a nuclear payload. No experiment was
> planned.
> The experts were shown the new device and asked for their comments.
>
> 2.  Moghaddam presented the new warhead through a computer simulation
> attached to the missile. His presentation was watched on a big screen. The
> missile exploded upon an order from the computer.
>
> The warhead blew first; the solid fuel in its engines next, so explaining
> the
> two consecutive bangs across Tehran and the early impression of two
> explosions, the first more powerful than the second, occurring at the huge
> 52
> sq. kilometer complex of Alghadir.
>
> 3.  Because none of the missile experts survived and all the equipment and
> structures pulverized within a half-kilometer radius of the explosion, the
> investigators had no witnesses and hardly any physical evidence to work
> from.
>
> Iranian intelligence heads entertain two initial theories to account for
> the
> sudden calamity: a) that Western intelligence service or the Israeli Mossad
> managed to plant a technician among the missile program's personnel and he
> signaled the computer to order the missile to explode; or b), a theory
> which
> they find more plausible, that the computer controlling the missile was
> infected with the Stuxnet virus which misdirected the missile into blowing
> without anyone present noticing anything amiss until it was too late.  It
> is
> the second theory which has got Iran's leaders really worried because it
> means that, in the middle of spiraling tension with the United States and
> Israel or their nuclear weapons program, their entire Shahab 3 and Sejil 2
> ballistic missile arsenal is infected and out of commission until minute
> tests are completed. Western intelligence sources told debkafile that
> Iran's
> supreme armed forces chief Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi was playing for time
> when
> he announced this week that the explosion had "only delayed by two weeks
> the
> manufacturing of an experimental product by the Revolutionary Guards which
> could be a strong fist in the face of arrogance (the United States) and the
> occupying regime (Israel)."
>
> Iran needs time to thoroughly investigate the causes of the fatal explosion
> and convince everyone that the computer systems controlling its missiles of
> the Stuxnet malworm will be cleansed and running in no time just like the
> Natanz uranium enrichment installation and Bushehr atomic reactor which
> were
> decontaminated between June and September 2010.
>
> If indeed Stuxnet is back, the cleanup this time would take several months,
> according to Western experts - certainly longer than the two weeks
> estimated
> by Gen. Firouz-Abadi.
>
> Those experts also rebut the contention of certain Western and Russian
> computer pros that Stuxnet and another virus called Duqu are linked.
>
> The head of Iran's civil defense program Gholamreza Jalali said this week
> that the fight against Duqu is "in its initial phase" and the final report
> "which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its
> impacts
> are has not been complete yet. All the organizations and centers that could
> be susceptible to being contaminated are under control."





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