Can the West come up with another killer Virus,
To avoid an attack by Israel on Iranian Nuke Sites,
By once again setting back Iranian Nuclear Program?
July 21, 2011
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
The Iranians have been scurrying around like a group of beavers trying to patch a break in one of their dams. At the same time the West has been running to and fro frantically trying to create a new virus which will once again penetrate the Iranian nuclear dam, and produce another delay in its nuclear program. If the West creates such a virus it would likely delay an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The Three Following July Excerpts from the DEBKAfile, Jerusalem Post, and Ynet News discuss the fallout generated by Stuxnet virus on the Iranian nuclear program.
Hopefully, the West can develop another deadly virus to slip into the Iranian nuke program
Begin Excerpt from DEBKAfile
Stuxnet returns to bedevil Iran’s nuclear systems
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
July 20, 2011, 4:35 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that the Stuxnet malworm which played havoc with Iran’s nuclear program for eleven months was not purged after all. Tehran never did overcome the disruptions caused by Stuxnet or restore its centrifuges to smooth and normal operation as was claimed. Indeed, Iran finally resorted to the only sure-fire cure, scrapping all the tainted machines and replacing them with new ones.Iran provided confirmation of this Tuesday, July 19 in an announcement
that improved and faster centrifuge models were being installed.
Iran would clearly not have undertaken the major and costly project of replacing all its 5,000-6,000 centrifuges with new ones if they were indeed functioning smoothly.
The announcement was made by the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman at a press briefing although no one present had raised the nuclear issue. He said: “The installation of new centrifuges with better quality and speed is ongoing… this is another confirmation of the Islamic republic’s successful strides in its nuclear activities.”
Britain and France immediately condemned the announcement. It proved, official spokesmen commented, that Iran plans to triple the amount
of uranium it enriches in contravention of six UN Security Council Resolutions and defiance of ten International Atomic Energy Agency decisions in Vienna. The announcement also “confirmed suspicions that the Iranian nuclear program had no credible civilian application.”
In recent months, Iran has taken advantage of the West’s preoccupation with the Arab revolt to quietly forge ahead unnoticed with its weapons program. So if everything was moving smoothly forward why did Tehran suddenly decide to raise the touchy subject again?
Indeed, by doing so, the official spokesman placed in doubt the three major strides Iran was generally presumed to have made while the West was otherwise engaged:
1. The dramatic speeding-up of uranium enrichment and expansion of the quantities produced.
The West has no credible information, whether from intelligence, research, or nuclear watchdog inspections, as to how much enriched uranium Iran has produced and how much it has in stock.
As DEBKAfile reported previously, for the past six months, Iran managed to keep the full scope of its enrichment activities hidden from IAEA inspections. Although inspectors were allowed to visit Iran’s acknowledged enrichment facility at Natanz, they were unable to gauge how many active centrifuges were present and how many removed to unknown site or sites. The sophisticated cameras supposed to monitor the Natanz facility were unable to record all of Iran’s enrichment activities because key production sites were moved out of range.
2. The glitches bedeviling their centrifuge machines were overcome and all 5,000 were spinning away without interruption. After expunging the Stuxnet virus
which first struck in June 2010, all their nuclear program’s control systems and installations, including Natanz and the Russian-built Bushehr reactor, were functioning perfectly. It took Iranian and Russian computer and cyber-terrorism experts a year to cleanse the system. This gave security agencies their first indicator of the time it takes to overcome a large-scale, sophisticated cyber attack.
On July 5, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, head of Israeli military intelligence, said that Iran is currently running 5,000 active centrifuges and aiming for 8,000.
He made no reference to their replacement with newer and faster machines – which the Iranian spokesman disclosed suddenly last Tuesday.
3. The Iranians are engaged in the relocation of the centrifuges spinning 20-percent grade enriched uranium to a new underground facility at Fordo, 100 kilometers away near Qom. Tehran has rejected every European and IAEA demand to install monitoring and inspection equipment at the new facility which is therefore functioning without international oversight.
Those presumptions are now largely suspect.
Western intelligence sources tell DEBKAfile that until recently, the Iranians believed they had a clear road for enriching large quantities of high-grade uranium after solving technical obstructions and beating back the cyber attack.
But then, they were stunned to discover that the Stuxnet virus, far from being eradicated, was back with a vengeance and on the offensive against their centrifuges. Iran was forced to adopt a course it had avoided last year, namely to destroy the entire plant of approximately 5,000 working centrifuges and replace them all with new machines.
This decision led to the foreign ministry spokesman’s one-sentence announcement. He delivered it to pre-empt Iran’s enemies from picking up on the installation of the new centrifuges and making it public with the real reason for dumping the “smoothly” operating ones.
Begin Excerpt 2 from THE JERUSALEM POST
‘Stuxnet virus set back Iran’s nuclear program by 2 years’
By YAAKOV KATZ
12/15/2010 05:15
Top German computer consultant tells ‘Post’ virus was as effective as military strike, a huge success; expert speculates IDF creator of virus.
The Stuxnet virus, which has attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities and which Israel is suspected of creating, has set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by two years, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze the program’s code told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“It will take two years for Iran to get back on track,” Langer said in a telephone interview from his office in Hamburg, Germany. “This was nearly as effective as a military strike, but even better since there are no fatalities and no full-blown war. From a military perspective, this was a huge success.”
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‘Stuxnet specifically targeted Iranian nuclear program’
Langer spoke to the Post amid news reports that the virus was still infecting Iran’s computer systems at its main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and its reactor at Bushehr.
Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, said that Iran had suspended work at its nuclear-field production facilities, likely a result of the Stuxnet virus.
According to Langer, Iran’s best move would be to throw out all of the computers that have been infected by the worm, which he said was the most “advanced and aggressive malware in history.” But, he said, even once all of the computers were thrown out, Iran would have to ensure that computers used by outside contractors were also clean of Stuxnet.
“It is extremely difficult to clean up installations from Stuxnet, and we know that Iran is no good in IT [information technology] security, and they are just beginning to learn what this all means,” he said. “Just to get their systems running again they have to get rid of the virus, and this will take time, and then they need to replace the equipment, and they have to rebuild the centrifuges at Natanz and possibly buy a new turbine for Bushehr.”
Widespread speculation has named Israel’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200, known for its advanced Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities, as the possible creator of the software, as well as the United States.
Langer said that in his opinion at least two countries – possibly Israel and the United States – were behind Stuxnet.
Israel has traditionally declined comment on its suspected involvement in the Stuxnet virus, but senior IDF officers recently confirmed that Iran had encountered significant technological difficulties with its centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.
“We can say that it must have taken several years to develop, and we arrived at this conclusion through code analysis, since the code on the control systems is 15,000 lines of code, and this is a huge amount,” Langer said.
“This piece of evidence led us to conclude that this is not by a hacker,” he continued. “It had to be a country, and we can also conclude that even one nation-state would not have been able to do this on its own.”
Eric Byres, a computer security expert who runs a website called Tofino Security, which provides solutions for industrial companies with Stuxnet-related problems, told the Post on Tuesday that the number of Iranians visiting his site had jumped tremendously in recent weeks – a likely indication that the virus is still causing great disarray at Iranian nuclear facilities.
“What caught our attention was that last year we maybe had one or two people from Iran trying to access the secure areas on our site,” Byres said. “Iran was never on the map for us, and all of a sudden we are now getting massive numbers of people going to our website, and people who we can identify as being from Iran.” Byres said that some people openly identified themselves as Iranian when asking for permission to log onto his website, while others were impersonating employees of industries with which he frequently works.
“There are a large number of people trying to access the secure areas directly from Iran and other people who are putting together fake identities,” he said. “We are talking about hundreds. It could be people who are curious about what is going on, but we are such a specialized site that it would only make sense that these are people who are involved in control systems.”
Begin Excerpt 3 from Ynet News
Report: Iran moving nuclear program to bunker
Telegraph reports Fowdrow facility, located inside mountain near Qom, can withstand airstrikes
News Agencies
Published 07.14.11, 10:14/ Israel News
Iran is moving its nuclear program into a mountain facility able to withstand air and missile strikes, the Telegraph reported Thursday, citing recent intelligence reports.
The report says Iran disclosed the Fowrdow facility’s location, inside a mountain near Qom, after Western intelligence sources reported of its existence
Experts fear that Tehran’s decision to begin moving some 3,000 centrifuges to Fowdrow could signal its final push for a nuclear weapon.
“We see Iran moving in the direction of becoming a nuclear weapons capable state,” Olli Heinonen, a former head of UN nuclear inspections worldwide, told the Telegraph.
The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed concern over the move, though it had reported that no centrifuges had been moved to the facility by May 21.
The IAEA’s May report said Iran was conducting tests involving materials that could only be explained by a desire to produce a nuclear warhead – specifically explosives and a ballistic missile cone.
But Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi continued to insist this week that Iran is not interested in nuclear weapons.
“Our Supreme Leader has explained that the production and use of atomic weapons is wrong, not only in terms of foreign policy but on religious grounds,” he told a Vienna conference on nuclear power.
Tehran said earlier this month that it will triple 20% enriched uranium production in order to fuel a medical research facility
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