Editor’s note: keep in mind that the StuxNet virus had a hand in the Fukishima disaster, and that the security of the plant was done by an Israeli company.
Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.
Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.
“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.
Told it was unclear how much the Iranians knew about the code, and offered evidence that it was still causing havoc, Mr. Obama decided that the cyberattacks should proceed. In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that. The last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium. […]
Source: Washington Post
Iran starts making own anti-virus software
Iran has started making its own anti-virus software, Assistant Professor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Shiraz, Mohammad Hossein Sheikhi said, ISNA reported.
The software is being developed by Iranian experts from Shiraz Computer Emergency Response Team of APA (Academic Protection and Awareness) of Iran. APA centers started operation in 2007 with the intention of providing service in the fields of network security and network disorders.
Sheikhi said the work on the domestic-made antivirus started in 2010, and since then undergone successful tests.
In 2010, Iran’s industrial and nuclear computer systems were attacked by the Stuxnet worm. The worm was a malware designed to infect computers using Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) – a control system favoured by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs and power plants.
Since then Iranian officials have stated that the country will be working on strengthening country’s online security.
Source: Trend