Beware The ‘Sons Of Stuxnet’

The Virus That Compromised Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure Is A Model Of Things To Come, and Israel Is Not Immune

By DAVID SHAMAH

Stuxnet was, according to many security analysts, a major success. The virus that targeted Iranian infrastructure servers significantly delayed the progress of that country’s nuclear program, most experts agree.


That is the kind of success that inspires copycats and leads hackers to develop “offspring” building on the sophistication and reach of the original, said Sergey Novikov, deputy director, global research & analysis team at Kaspersky Lab.

Novikov was in Israel recently to introduce Kaspersky’s new security product, Endpoint Security for Business. As part of the introduction, he gave a general presentation on the computer security situation in general as well as in Israel.

With all the publicity surrounding Stuxnet and Flame (which Kaspersky Lab head Eugene Kaspersky last year called “the beginning of the end of the world as we know it“), one would expect that awareness of the security risks in unprotected surfing would be high and that companies would be taking every possible precaution.

But there is still a long way to go. During the first five months of 2013, a new virus, Trojan or other piece of malware was being discovered at a rate twice as fast as the same period in 2012. This year it’s about one every half-second, which is equivalent to an astounding 200,000 per day.

Nevertheless, some three-quarters of the IT decision makers and managers in large enterprise companies are convinced either that they are ready for the onslaught — even though, a Kaspersky Lab poll showed, most had no idea of the extent and power of today’s malware — or that “it won’t happen to us.”

Another one-quarter of top computer system managers in these companies were aware of the dangers, but said that they could not justify to their bosses the cost of the major security overhaul that was necessary. Meanwhile, that same poll showed that 91% of the IT managers themselves had, in the past year, been the victim of a serious attack.

If those managers are heading up security at the electric, gas, water, or other infrastructure company, said Novikov, “then we all have a lot to worry about,” because those systems are becoming popular targets for hackers. But the newest trend in hacking is in state- or organization-sponsored hacking.

Much like Stuxnet, which, according to most analysts, was put together by a highly professional team of state-sponsored hackers — both Israel and the US are suspected — the more recent Red October attack was also said to have been launched by a state or state-sponsored group. The attack, which targeted computers in diplomatic missions and embassies, science labs, and government offices around the world — was found to contain malware that had been transmitting information to unknown parties (China is considered a prime suspect).

To get to those sites, hackers presumably had to work around numerous layers of protection. And it’s just a matter of time, said Novikov, before these groups begin targeting infrastructure in enemy countries, either to extort concessions from their victims, or as an act of terror or war.

“At this point, we should expect such infrastructure attacks anytime and anywhere,” Novikov told The Times of Israel. “It’s just a matter of time before someone pulls one off, and it will have a huge impact.”

Israel is in no way immune to such attacks, warned the Kaspersky deputy director. “Israel is in better security shape than many countries in places like Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union countries, but many EU countries are more cyber-secure than Israel.”

Then there are the threats from the cloud — “Why spend time attacking individual computers for information when you can attack a database in the cloud and get a lot of information for the same effort?” Novikov asked rhetorically — as well as the threats from unsecured mobile devices (the vast majority do not even have basic anti-virus protection, he added).

And there are the enhanced “social engineering” techniques users face today, which tries to convince users users to click on links that secretly install malware that will enslave their machines or devices to one of the fast-growing “botnets” that cause all sorts of online trouble. 

“We are going to be seeing many ‘sons of Stuxnet,’ much more sophisticated malware in terms of its reach and capabilities,” Novikov added. “We, indeed, do live in interesting times.”

Has The US Started An Internet War?

By Bruce Schneier

Today, the United States is conducting offensive cyberwar actions around the world.

More than passively eavesdropping, we're penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We're creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be "fired" against some piece of another country's electronic infrastructure on a moment's notice.

This is much worse than what we're accusing China of doing to us. We're pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren't making the Internet any safer. We're reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We're ignoring resilience in favor of offense.

Welcome to the cyberwar arms race, an arms race that will define the Internet in the 21st century.

Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued last October and released by Edward Snowden, outlines U.S. cyberwar policy. Most of it isn't very interesting, but there are two paragraphs about "Offensive Cyber Effect Operations," or OCEO, that are intriguing:

"OECO can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging. The development and sustainment of OCEO capabilities, however, may require considerable time and effort if access and tools for a specific target do not already exist.

"The United States Government shall identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power, establish and maintain OCEO capabilities integrated as appropriate with other U.S. offensive capabilities, and execute those capabilities in a manner consistent with the provisions of this directive."

These two paragraphs, and another paragraph about OCEO, are the only parts of the document classified "top secret." And that's because what they're saying is very dangerous.

Cyberattacks have the potential to be both immediate and devastating. They can disrupt communications systems, disable national infrastructure, or, as in the case of Stuxnet, destroy nuclear reactors; but only if they've been created and targeted beforehand. Before launching cyberattacks against another country, we have to go through several steps.

We have to study the details of the computer systems they're running and determine the vulnerabilities of those systems. If we can't find exploitable vulnerabilities, we need to create them: leaving "back doors" in hacker speak. Then we have to build new cyberweapons designed specifically to attack those systems.

Sometimes we have to embed the hostile code in those networks, these are called "logic bombs," to be unleashed in the future. And we have to keep penetrating those foreign networks, because computer systems always change and we need to ensure that the cyberweapons are still effective.

Like our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, our cyberweapons arsenal must be pretargeted and ready to launch.

That's what Obama directed the U.S. Cyber Command to do. We can see glimpses in how effective we are in Snowden's allegationsthat the NSA is currently penetrating foreign networks around the world: "We hack network backbones -- like huge Internet routers, basically -- that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one."

The NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command are basically the same thing. They're both at Fort Meade in Maryland, and they're both led by Gen. Keith Alexander. The same people who hack network backbones are also building weapons to destroy those backbones. At a March Senate briefing, Alexander boasted of creating more than a dozen offensive cyber units.

Longtime NSA watcher James Bamford reached the same conclusion in his recent profile of Alexander and the U.S. Cyber Command (written before the Snowden revelations). He discussed some of the many cyberweapons the U.S. purchases:

"According to Defense News' C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its intelligence clients -- agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence -- a unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw, the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected to the Internet around the world, providing what's called network situational awareness. The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country and city -- say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such as the Ministry of Public Security's No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer security -- or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks turned into botnets and zombies -- the equivalent of a back door left open...

"The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war. 'If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary's systems, you are laying the electronic battlefield and preparing to use it' wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. 'In my opinion, these activities constitute acts of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war.' The question is, who else is on the secretive company's client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. "It should be illegal,' said the former senior intelligence official involved in cyberwarfare. 'I knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn't like it, but they're the largest consumer of that business.'"

That's the key question: How much of what the United States is currently doing is an act of war by international definitions? Already we're accusing China of penetrating our systems in order to map "military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis." What PPD-20 and Snowden describe is much worse, and certainly China, and other countries, are doing the same.

All of this mapping of vulnerabilities and keeping them secret for offensive use makes the Internet less secure, and these pre-targeted, ready-to-unleash cyberweapons are destabalizing forces on international relationships. Rooting around other countries' networks, analyzing vulnerabilities, creating back doors, and leaving logic bombs could easily be construed as an act of war. And all it takes is one over-achieving national leader for this all to tumble into actual war.

It's time to stop the madness. Yes, our military needs to invest in cyberwar capabilities, but we also need international rules of cyberwar, more transparency from our own government on what we are and are not doing, international cooperation between governments and viable cyberweapons treaties. Yes, these are difficult. Yes, it's a long slow process. Yes, there won't be international consensus, certainly not in the beginning. But even with all of those problems, it's a better path to go down than the one we're on now.

We can start by taking most of the money we're investing in offensive cyberwar capabilities and spend them on national cyberspace resilience. MAD, mutually assured destruction, made sense because there were two superpowers opposing each other. On the Internet there are all sorts of different powers, from nation-states to much less organized groups. An arsenal of cyberweapons begs to be used, and, as we learned from Stuxnet, there's always collateral damage to innocents when they are. We're much safer with a strong defense than with a counterbalancing offense.

Obama Orders List For Overseas Cyber-Attacks

By Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) "can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging".

It says the government will "identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power".

The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency. 

The aim of the document was "to put in place tools and a framework to enable government to make decisions" on cyber actions, a senior administration official told the Guardian.

The administration published some declassified talking points from the directive in January 2013, but those did not mention the stepping up of America's offensive capability and the drawing up of a target list.

Obama's move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.

The directive's publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

Even before the publication of the directive, Beijing had hit back against US criticism, with a senior official claiming to have "mountains of data" on American cyber-attacks he claimed were every bit as serious as thoseChina was accused of having carried out against the US.

Presidential Policy Directive 20 defines OCEO as "operations and related programs or activities … conducted by or on behalf of the United States Government, in or through cyberspace, that are intended to enable or produce cyber effects outside United States government networks."

Asked about the stepping up of US offensive capabilities outlined in the directive, a senior administration official said: "Once humans develop the capacity to build boats, we build navies. Once you build airplanes, we build air forces."

The official added: "As a citizen, you expect your government to plan for scenarios. We're very interested in having a discussion with our international partners about what the appropriate boundaries are."

The document includes caveats and precautions stating that all US cyber operations should conform to US and international law, and that any operations "reasonably likely to result in significant consequences require specific presidential approval".

The document says that agencies should consider the consequences of any cyber-action. They include the impact on intelligence-gathering; the risk of retaliation; the impact on the stability and security of the internet itself; the balance of political risks versus gains; and the establishment of unwelcome norms of international behaviour.

Among the possible "significant consequences" are loss of life; responsive actions against the US; damage to property; serious adverse foreign policy or economic impacts.

The US is understood to have already participated in at least one major cyber attack, the use of the Stuxnet computer worm targeted on Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges, the legality of which has been the subject of controversy. US reports citing high-level sources within the intelligence services said the US and Israel were responsible for the worm.

In the presidential directive, the criteria for offensive cyber operations in the directive is not limited to retaliatory action but vaguely framed as advancing "US national objectives around the world".

The revelation that the US is preparing a specific target list for offensive cyber-action is likely to reignite previously raised concerns of security researchers and academics, several of whom have warned that large-scale cyber operations could easily escalate into full-scale military conflict.

Sean Lawson, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Utah, argues: "When militarist cyber rhetoric results in use of offensive cyber attack it is likely that those attacks will escalate into physical, kinetic uses of force."

An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency's systems told the Guardian the US complaints again China were hypocritical, because America had participated in offensive cyber operations and widespread hacking – breaking into foreign computer systems to mine information.

Provided anonymity to speak critically about classified practices, the source said: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world."

The US likes to haul China before the international court of public opinion for "doing what we do every day", the source added.

One of the unclassified points released by the administration in January stated: "It is our policy that we shall undertake the least action necessary to mitigate threats and that we will prioritize network defense and law enforcement as preferred courses of action."

The full classified directive repeatedly emphasizes that all cyber-operations must be conducted in accordance with US law and only as a complement to diplomatic and military options. But it also makes clear how both offensive and defensive cyber operations are central to US strategy.

Under the heading "Policy Reviews and Preparation", a section marked "TS/NF" - top secret/no foreign - states: "The secretary of defense, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], and the director of the CIA … shall prepare for approval by the president through the National Security Advisor a plan that identifies potential systems, processes and infrastructure against which the United States should establish and maintain OCEO capabilities…" The deadline for the plan is six months after the approval of the directive.

The directive provides that any cyber-operations "intended or likely to produce cyber effects within the United States" require the approval of the president, except in the case of an "emergency cyber action". When such an emergency arises, several departments, including the department of defense, are authorized to conduct such domestic operations without presidential approval.

Obama further authorized the use of offensive cyber attacks in foreign nations without their government's consent whenever "US national interests and equities" require such nonconsensual attacks. It expressly reserves the right to use cyber tactics as part of what it calls "anticipatory action taken against imminent threats".

The directive makes multiple references to the use of offensive cyber attacks by the US military. It states several times that cyber operations are to be used only in conjunction with other national tools and within the confines of law.

When the directive was first reported, lawyers with the Electronic PrivacyInformation Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it to be made public. The NSA, in a statement, refused to disclose the directive on the ground that it was classified.

In January, the Pentagon announced a major expansion of its Cyber Command Unit, under the command of General Keith Alexander, who is also the director of the NSA. That unit is responsible for executing both offensive and defensive cyber operations.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon publicly accused China for the first time of being behind attacks on the US. The Washington Post reported last month that Chinese hackers had gained access to the Pentagon's most advanced military programs.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, identified cyber threats in general as the top national security threat.

Obama officials have repeatedly cited the threat of cyber-attacks to advocate new legislation that would vest the US government with greater powers to monitor and control the internet as a means of guarding against such threats.

One such bill currently pending in Congress, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa), has prompted serious concerns from privacy groups, who say that it would further erode online privacy while doing little to enhance cyber security.

In a statement, Caitlin Hayden, national security council spokeswoman, said: "We have not seen the document the Guardian has obtained, as they did not share it with us. However, as we have already publicly acknowledged, last year the president signed a classified presidential directive relating to cyber operations, updating a similar directive dating back to 2004. This step is part of the administration's focus on cybersecurity as a top priority. The cyber threat has evolved, and we have new experiences to take into account.

"This directive establishes principles and processes for the use of cyber operations so that cyber tools are integrated with the full array of national security tools we have at our disposal. It provides a whole-of-government approach consistent with the values that we promote domestically and internationally as we have previously articulated in the International Strategy for Cyberspace.

"This directive will establish principles and processes that can enable more effective planning, development, and use of our capabilities. It enables us to be flexible, while also exercising restraint in dealing with the threats we face. It continues to be our policy that we shall undertake the least action necessary to mitigate threats and that we will prioritize network defense and law enforcement as the preferred courses of action. The procedures outlined in this directive are consistent with the US Constitution, including the president's role as commander in chief, and other applicable law and policies."

Our Cyber-Wars Will Trigger Blowback

By Richard Silverstein,

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made his first major speech about U.S. cyber-war policy to a business roundtable group this week. He invoked 9/11 and Pearl Harbor in warning of the danger of a cyber-attack on the U.S:

[He] spoke in … stark language about potential military responses to cyber-attacks that threaten national security.

The United States is now in a “pre-9/11 moment,” Panetta said, at risk of crippling online attacks against public utilities, trains, or chemical factories…. [Such] attacks … could spark the “cyber Pearl Harbor” that the defense secretary has often referred to.

“An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to … derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” he said. “They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”

The most damaging attacks could combine a multi-pronged attack: knocking civil and military computer systems offline, with a physical attack on the country.

One of the most troubling aspects of Panetta’s statement was his total amnesia when it comes to the role of our own country in this field. It’s one of the world’s worst-kept secrets (in fact, the Obama administration itself couldn’t leak fast enough in boasting of its involvement) that the U.S. and Israel together jointly developed the Stuxnet and Flame computer viruses in a program code-named Olympic Games. It attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, destroyed 20% of their uranium-enrichment capability, and penetrated the computer systems of Iran’s military and political leadership.

We did this before Iran waged any sort of cyber-attack on us. We did this knowing it would induce Iran to develop its own capabilities and strike back. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy for us to shake our fist at any potential attackers and threaten them with massive retaliation when we ourselves have done far worse.

No one has ever given the U.S. high marks when it comes to sensitivity concerning the ways in which it wields power in the world. This is yet another example of how we arrogate to ourselves ultimate power and the right to make life-and-death decisions over our enemies, while we deny them the right to do precisely the same thing to us.

As one U.S. government cyber security consultant told The New York Times: “What the Iranians want to do now is make it clear they can disrupt our economy, just as we are disrupting theirs. And they are quite serious about it.”

Further proof of our hypocrisy is the U.S. announcement over the past days that Iran is suspected in a series of cyber-attacks on major U.S. banks, which brought down their computer systems over the course of several days. In addition, oil facilities and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States were attacked. It appears that Panetta’s speech is a response to such news and a tacit warning to the Iranians that they’re playing with fire, though likening attacks on a Saudi oil company and bringing down the websites of a few banks to a “cyber 9/11” seems far-fetched in the extreme.

What the U.S. media has failed to note is that Iran recently conceded that its own maritime facilities and oil industry had come under cyber-assault that could easily have been the work of U.S. cyber-warriors. The electrical power lines to Iran’s Fordow uranium-enrichment plant were bombed as well, in an attack a high-level Israeli source told me originated with the Mossad and its Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) accomplices.

What’s especially troubling is that we will try to use Iran’s alleged efforts to sabotage our economy as proof that it is a rogue nation worthy of ostracism, while we deserve no less opprobrium for our own policies and behavior. This is nothing less than the equivalent of the victor’s justice that governed the Nuremberg trials. Somehow our enemies become moral pariahs while the depravity of our own misdeeds (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Tokyo) is excused as morally just or expedient.

So, for example, the defense secretary’s reassurance that we accept the rule of international law over the use of cyber-weapons does nothing to reassure. After all, this is the same administration that prepares terror kill lists and somehow finds that targeted killing falls within the bounds of international law. 

You’ll recall the high moral dudgeon into which we flew in this country after a so-called Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. was exposed. The notion that Iranian agents might export their grudges here and spill blood on American soil seemed especially outrageous. We conveniently forgot that Israel’s Mossad and its MEK accomplices had assassinated the cream of the Iranian nuclear scientist corps. While the U.S. may not have directly participated, Sy Hersh showed that U.S. special forces had trained the MEK in covert ops at a secret Nevada training facility as late as 2007.

The Pentagon has backed up Panetta’s threats against our cyber-enemies by making cyber weapons and technology one of the few growth industries inside the military-industrial complex. Recently, DARPA, the Pentagon’s research agency, circulated a request for proposals to the defense industry notifying it that the military was willing to spend hundreds of millions on new technology in this field. The new program has been dubbed Plan X.

Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, noted the danger of the U.S. government’s headlong flight toward cyber-war with this warning: “It makes it sound like the U.S. is preparing to be able to wage a full-out cyber-war. Those kinds of statements could come back to haunt the U.S. down the road.”

Via: "Anti-War"

Stuxnet Goes Out Of Control

Chevron Infected By Anti-Iranian Virus, Others Could Be Next

America’s cyberwar is already seeing collateral damage, and it’s hitting the country’s own billion-dollar companies. Oil giants Chevron say the Stuxnet computer virus made by the US to target Iran infected their systems as well.

California-based Chevron, a Fortune 500 company that’s among the biggest corporations in the world, admits this week that they discovered the Stuxnet worm on their systems back in 2010. Up until now, Chevron managed to make their finding a well-kept secret, and their disclosure published by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday marks the first time a US company has come clean about being infected by the virus intended for Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Mark Koelmel of the company’s earth sciences department says that they are likely to not be the last, though.

“We’re finding it in our systems and so are other companies,” says Koelmel. “So now we have to deal with this.”

“I don’t think the US government even realized how far it had spread,” Koelmel adds.

Discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet worm was reported with all but certainty to be the creation of the United States, perhaps with the assistance of Israel, to set back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program as a preemptive measure against an eventual war. Only as recently as this June, however, American officials with direct knowledge of the worm went public with Uncle Sam’s involvement.

In a June 2012 article published by The New York Times, government agents with direct knowledge of Stuxnet claimed that first President George W. Bush, then Barack Obama, oversaw the deployment of the worm as part of a well-crafted cyberassault on Iran. Coupled with another malicious program named Flame and perhaps many more, Stuxnet was waged against Iran as part of an initiative given the codename “Olympic Games.” Rather than solely stealing intelligence through use of computer coding, the endeavor was believed to be the first cyberattack that intended to cause actual hard damage.

“Previous cyberattacks had effects limited to other computers,” Michael Hayden, the former chief of the CIA, explained to the Times earlier this year. “This is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyberattack was used to effect physical destruction.”

After the Times published their expose in June, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of Intelligence Committee, called for an investigation to track down how the media was first made aware of America’s involvement in Olympic Games.

When Feinstein spoke to DC’s The Hill newspaper, she said, "the leak about the attack on Iran's nuclear program could 'to some extent' provide justification for copycat attacks against the United States." 

Speaking of the accidental impact Stuxnet could soon have in the US, Chevron’s Koelmel tells the Journal, "I think the downside of what they did is going to be far worse than what they actually accomplished.”

Via: "Russia Today"

Epoch Of 'Computer Virus Wars' Starts

The US is launching a new stage of the arms race – a race of offensive computer weapons.Namely, the US is going to arm itself with computer viruses in order to destroy the enemy’s computer networks. Besides, the US Defense Department is developing a computer program which would deduce the level of information security of the enemy’s strategic facilities.

Until now, the US has been denying that it had any plans of developing “computer weapons”.

A website devoted to US state procurements recently announced two tenders. The first one, announced by the US Air Force, is a tender for creating computer programs which would be able to destroy the enemy’s computer networks and put computer-operated devices out of order. The Air Force is planning to spend $ 10 mln on that.

The second tender was announced by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency is ready to spend $ 110 mln on creating a program which has already received the name “Plan X” – a digital map which would reflect the enemy’s military infrastructure.

“Most probably, this map will show, first of all, military bases, transport systems and electricity systems,” expert in the work of intelligence services Evgeny Yuschuk said in an interview with the Voice of Russia.

“In the case of a war, it would be quite expectable for the warring sides to try to put each other’s transport and electricity systems out of order. If these systems are operated by computers, they would try to use computer viruses.”

Analysts say that wars of computer programs, in fact, have already started. For example, in May, Iran’s top officials discovered regular disappearances of secret information from their computers. Later, Iranian computer experts discovered that this information was stolen by a new virus spy program called “Flame”.

The abilities of this new spy program shocked computer experts. Specialists from the Kaspersky Laboratory (a Russian company which develops anti-virus programs, probably the most popular ones in Russia) say that “Flame” is currently the world’s most advanced hacker program.

“Strategically important facilities in Russia have also come under US virus programs’ attacks,” another Russian expert in the work of intelligent services, Andrey Masalovich, says.

“Attacks of virus programs have already become permanent – mainly, on nuclear power plants and on objects that have to do with the trade of weapons,” Mr. Masalovich says. “There have even been attacks on computer search engines, like the Russian Yandex."

Sometimes, after an attack of a virus on a computer-operated facility or a computer network, it is hard to say who was behind this attack – amateur hackers or a secret intelligence service of a certain country.

Russia is now insisting that the UN should introduce a ban on creating and producing computer viruses and hacker programs.

Via: "The Voice Of Russia"

Israel Struck By Mahdi Virus

Trojan May Be Part Of The Larger Flame Malware

After analyzing initial data on the virus when it was first publicized Tuesday, Symantec released a report saying that nearly two thirds of the computers that have been infected by Mahdi are in Israel. That is in sharp contrast to initial assessments Tuesday that claimed that the majority of infected systems were in Iran itself. Computer security firmKaspersky Labs reported on the Mahdi virus on Tuesday.

Discovery of the virus (actually, a Trojan, which appears to be a legitimate program but is in fact up to something nefarious) is credited to Israel’s Seculert, which discovered an email with an attached document that led to a website containing an article about alleged Israeli electronic attacks on Iranian computer systems.

Opening the email also installed a small program that communicated with a “command and control” server. That server was apparently being run by Iranians, Seculert said in a blog post Tuesday. “Interestingly, we found that the communication, and several of the server side components, included strings in Farsi as well as dates in the Persian calendar format.” The program performs a number of functions, such as stealing data, recording audio, and keylogging — recording keystrokes used on secure websites to copy passwords and sensitive data.

Although the latest communications trace indicated that the command and control server was located in Canada, “we were able to track variants of the same malware back to December 2011,” Seculert said. “Back then, the malware communicated with the same domain name, but the server was located in Tehran, Iran.”

Still, the company added, “it is still unclear whether this is a state-sponsored attack or not,” although the functions of the Trojan and the way it communicates indicate that “this operation might require a large investment and financial backing” — such as could be provided by a government.

In its study, Symantec said that Mahdi had the ability to update itself, much like the Flame virus announced by Kaspersky Labs in June (Seculert said that it had collaborated with Kaspersky and found significant similarities between Flame and Mahdi). “The Mahdi Trojan is installed in all types of computers and in many companies, but a preponderance of the infections are in computers belonging to oil companies, government offices, and foreign embassies.” While most of the computers are infected are in Israel, numerous other countries, from the US to New Zealand, have been affected.

That the Mahdi Trojan was built with Israelis in mind is obvious to anyone who comes across it. Several variants of the Trojan have been discovered in email attachments, such as Powerpoint presentations. The slides in the presentation display calm-looking images of mountains, streams, and lakes, and contain instructions to click on the images — in English and in Hebrew. One of the slides, for example, says in English “Would you like to see the Moses,” with a (properly-written) Hebrew translation below. A second slide instructs users to “look at the four central points of the next picture For 30 seconds… please click this file,” with another (this time, less successful) Hebrew translation.

Another variant displays a slide show of a missile destroying a fighter jet; at the end of the show viewers are prompted to click and install an executable file, that actually does nothing; the Trojan itself was installed when the user opened the attachment. Yet another shows a video of a missile test, as well as a pretend nuclear explosion.

In its report, Symantec said that the Mahdi Trojan “did not appear to be too sophisticated,” but if, as Kaspersky and Seculert suspect, Mahdi is part of the larger Flame system, there could be a great deal to worry about. In a presentation in Israel in June, Eugene Kaspersky, head of the virus-searching firm that bears his name, said that Flame was extremely sophisticated and had the ability to significantly compromise the world’s networks. Flame is so sophisticated, he said, that “it represents a new level of cyber threat, one that could be “the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. I have nightmares about it.”

Via: "Times Of Israel"

Stuxnet and The Bomb

BY KENNETTE BENEDICT
15 JUNE 2012
Courtesy of "The Bulletin"

With confirmation that the United States was behind the 2010 cyberattack on Iran's nuclear enrichment facility, the world has officially entered a new era of warfare. The New York Times' comprehensive reporting details how the US and Israeli governments developed the malicious Stuxnet software and how they deployed it in the digital wilderness of the Internet specifically to attack the plant at Natanz. Over the past decade, US experts have strenuously warned about the ominous possibility of other nations, rogue states, or even terrorist groups attacking US infrastructure through the Internet. As it happens, however, it is the United States that has developed malicious software in secrecy and launched it against another country -- in this case, Iran.

The parallels with the invention and first use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are eerie. Consider the similarities: First, government and scientific leaders invent a new kind of weapon out of fear that others will develop it first and threaten the United States. Second, the consequences of using the new weapon -- both the material damage it might cause as well as its effects on international security and arms-race dynamics -- are poorly understood. Third, scientists and engineers warn political and military leaders about the dangers of the new weapon and call for international cooperation to create rules of the road. Fourth, despite warnings by experts, the US government continues to develop this new class of weaponry, ultimately unleashing it without warning and without public discussion of its implications for peace and security.

And so, this may be another watershed moment, when, as Albert Einstein put it in 1954: "Everything has changed save our way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

During World War II, the Allies feared that Germany would be the first to create an atomic bomb with disastrous consequences for civilization. And so, in utmost secrecy, the United States and Britain mobilized their scientists and engineers in order to develop the first atomic bombs. In the end, Germany did not come close to producing a nuclear weapon; perhaps US fears had been overstated. But the major goal was achieved: The Allies won the race to create to harness atomic energy in a bomb. But instead of declaring that the game was over, American political leaders considered using the new bomb to bring the war against Japan to an end.

Even before the first test of the plutonium bomb at Trinity, however, scientists at the University of Chicago expressed their agonized reservations about using the Bomb against civilians in Japan. Nobel laureate and physicist James Franck and others foretold the dangers of an atomic arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. In a memo dated April 1945 intended for President Truman, they reasoned that the only way to prevent such a dangerous future was to place atomic energy under international control. The United Nations was just forming at the time and could serve, they believed, as the custodian of the nuclear weapons technology and material. Unfortunately, the warnings were not heeded. The United States used atomic weapons, Japan suffered unprecedented destruction, and the nuclear arms race officially began when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949.

Just as some scientists tried in vain to warn of the consequences of a first use of atomic weapons and an ensuing arms race based on nationalism and fear, so today's independent scientists and engineers have warned about the perilous effects of cyberwarfare. Unfortunately, once again, the warnings have fallen on deaf ears. And again the United States has acted despite the misgivings of experts, becoming the first state to successfully use malware against another state.

In the case of cyberweapon attacks, it is also very hard at this early stage to predict how much damage could be inflicted on societies. While malware might not cause the immediate horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ensuing chaos from bringing down, for example, air-traffic control systems, electrical grids, and financial markets would cause widespread damage, incredible hardship, and even death. We have come to know how nuclear weapons can destroy societies and human civilization. We have not yet begun to understand how cyberwarfare might destroy our way of life.

We do know, however, that the United States has much to lose from unrestrained cyberattack capabilities that might be spread around the world. In fact, the United States is so highly dependent on information and communications technology in every sector of society that it may be more vulnerable to attack than other countries.

That's why we need vigorous public discussion about this new class of weaponry. The stakes are too high to leave decisions in the hands of military and intelligence officers, or behind the closed doors of the situation room in the White House.

In 1945, atomic scientists determined that only international control of nuclear energy could prevent an arms race between the United States and other countries. In yet another parallel, cyber scientists and engineers also have called for international cooperation to establish institutions to control cybertechnology and protocols to prevent a new kind of arms race. Unfortunately, these recommendations have not been heeded either, and once more, government leaders seem all too eager to deploy a new and very dangerous weapon.

And how ironic that the first acknowledged military use of cyberwarfare is ostensibly to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. A new age of mass destruction will begin in an effort to close a chapter from the first age of mass destruction.

Cracking Stuxnet - A Cyber Weapon Of Mass Destruction

When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its unusually high level of sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. Ralph Langner and team helped crack the code that revealed this digital warhead's final target -- and its covert origins. In a fascinating look inside cyber-forensics, he explains how.

Ralph Langner is a German control system security consultant. He has received worldwide recognition for his analysis of the Stuxnet malware.

U.S., Israel Developed Flame Virus

By Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Julie Tate,
Published: June 19, 2012
Courtesy Of "The Washington Post"


The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran’s computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyber­warfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel’s military, has included the use of destructive software such as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear-enrichment equipment.
The emerging details about Flame provide new clues to what is thought to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. “Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

Flame came to light last month after Iran detected a series of cyberattacks on its oil industry. The disruption was directed by Israel in a unilateral operation that apparently caught its American partners off guard, according to several U.S. and Western officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

There has been speculation that Washington had a role in developing Flame, but the collaboration on the virus between the United States and Israel has not been previously confirmed. Commercial security researchers reported last week that Flame contained some of the same code as Stuxnet. Experts described the overlap as DNA-like evidence that the two sets of malware were parallel projects run by the same entity.

Spokesmen for the CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

The virus is among the most sophisticated and subversive pieces of malware to be exposed to date. Experts said the program was designed to replicate across even highly secure networks, then control everyday computer functions to send secrets back to its creators. The code could activate computer microphones and cameras, log keyboard strokes, take screen shots, extract geo­location data from images, and send and receive commands and data through Bluetooth wireless technology.

Flame was designed to do all this while masquerading as a routine Microsoft software update; it evaded detection for several years by using a sophisticated program to crack an encryption algorithm.

“This is not something that most security researchers have the skills or resources to do,” said Tom Parker, chief technology officer for FusionX, a security firm that specializes in simulating state-sponsored cyberattacks. He said he does not know who was behind the virus. “You’d expect that of only the most advanced cryptomathematicians, such as those working at NSA.”

Conventional Plus Cyber


Flame was developed at least five years ago as part of a classified effort code-named Olympic Games, according to officials familiar with U.S. cyber-operations and experts who have scrutinized its code. The U.S.-Israeli collaboration was intended to slow Iran’s nuclear program, reduce the pressure for a conventional military attack and extend the timetable for diplomacy and sanctions.

The cyberattacks augmented conventional sabotage efforts by both countries, including inserting flawed centrifuge parts and other components into Iran’s nuclear supply chain.

The best-known cyberweapon let loose on Iran was Stuxnet, a name coined by researchers in the antivirus industry who discovered it two years ago. It infected a specific type of industrial controller at Iran’s uranium-
enrichment plant in Natanz, causing almost 1,000 centrifuges to spin out of control. The damage occurred gradually, over months, and Iranian officials initially thought it was the result of incompetence.

The scale of the espionage and sabotage effort “is proportionate to the problem that’s trying to be resolved,” the former intelligence official said, referring to the Iranian nuclear program. Although Stuxnet and Flame infections can be countered, “it doesn’t mean that other tools aren’t in play or performing effectively,” he said.

To develop these tools, the United States relies on two of its elite spy agencies. The NSA, known mainly for its electronic eavesdropping and code-breaking capabilities, has extensive expertise in developing malicious code that can be aimed at U.S. adversaries, including Iran. The CIA lacks the NSA’s sophistication in building malware but is deeply involved in the cyber-campaign.

The CIA’s Information Operations Center is second only to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center in size. The IOC, as it is known, performs an array of espionage functions, including extracting data from laptops seized in counter­terrorism raids. But the center specializes in computer penetrations that require closer contact with the target, such as using spies or unwitting contractors to spread a contagion via a thumb drive.

Both agencies analyze the intelligence obtained through malware such as Flame and have continued to develop new weapons even as recent attacks have been exposed.

Flame’s discovery shows the importance of mapping networks and collecting intelligence on targets as the prelude to an attack, especially in closed computer networks. Officials say gaining and keeping access to a network is 99 percent of the challenge.

“It is far more difficult to penetrate a network, learn about it, reside on it forever and extract information from it without being detected than it is to go in and stomp around inside the network causing damage,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former NSA director and CIA director who left office in 2009. He declined to discuss any operations he was involved with during his time in government.

Years In The Making


The effort to delay Iran’s nuclear program using cyber-techniques began in the mid-2000s, during President George W. Bush’s second term. At that point it consisted mainly of gathering intelligence to identify potential targets and create tools to disrupt them. In 2008, the program went operational and shifted from military to CIA control, former officials said.

Despite their collaboration on developing the malicious code, the United States and Israel have not always coordinated their attacks. Israel’s April assaults on Iran’s Oil Ministry and oil-export facilities caused only minor disruptions. The episode led Iran to investigate and ultimately discover Flame.

“The virus penetrated some fields — one of them was the oil sector,” Gholam Reza Jalali, an Iranian military cyber official, told Iranian state radio in May. “Fortunately, we detected and controlled this single incident.”

Some U.S. intelligence officials were dismayed that Israel’s unilateral incursion led to the discovery of the virus, prompting counter­measures.

The disruptions led Iran to ask a Russian security firm and a Hungarian cyber-lab for help, according to U.S. and international officials familiar with the incident.

Last week, researchers with Kaspersky Lab, the Russian security firm, reported their conclusion that Flame — a name they came up with — was created by the same group or groups that built Stuxnet. Kaspersky declined to comment on whether it was approached by Iran.

“We are now 100 percent sure that the Stuxnet and Flame groups worked together,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a Boston-based senior researcher with Kaspersky Lab.

The firm also determined that the Flame malware predates Stuxnet. “It looks like the Flame platform was used as a kickstarter of sorts to get the Stuxnet project going,” Schouwenberg said.



Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.

Mutually Assured Cyber-Destruction

Obama's Virus Wars: By Officially Sanctioned Leaks, The US Brags Of Its Cyber Warfare Alliance With Israel Against Iran. Is This Wise Or Safe Policy?

By Richard Silverstein and Muhammad Sahimi
Friday 8 June 2012 08.30 EDT
Courtesy Of "The Guardian"

Recent revelations about Flame, the most sophisticated cyber-worm ever created, and David Sanger's White House-authorized leak of classified information confirming US-Israeli collaboration in creating the Stuxnet and Duqu viruses, raise the question of how committed the US is to a negotiated resolution of the nuclear impasse with Iran.

A former senior Israeli government minister has told us that, just as Sanger confirmed Stuxnet was created in partnership with the IDF's Unit 8200 cyber warfare unit, Flame was created by similar figures in Israel. Stuxnet's main purpose was to sabotage Iran's uranium enrichment program. A Flame variant appears to have wiped out the hard drives of specific Iranian officials and damaged the National Iranian Oil Company's computer network last month, forcing some oil terminals to go offline.

Flame has even broader goals and capabilities. It targets specific computers and surveils the entire system, takes screenshots of instant messaging (IM) activity, and can turn on a microphone to monitor audio activity as well. Computers in a number of Arab countries deemed hostile to Israel (mostly Iran, but also Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Russia) have been infected.

Our source also confirms that Flame is the first cyber weapon used by Israeli intelligence to target its own citizens also. For example, Haaretz reports (Hebrew) on the gargantuan power struggle between the former IDF chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, which involved charges of spying, counter-spying and forged memos investigated by the security services. Our Israeli source tells us that the Shin Bet installed Flame on the computer of Barak's chief of staff after Ashkenazi complained the former was spying on him.

Sanger, meanwhile, writes that the Obama administration saw cyber warfare as an inexpensive, non-lethal method of covert war against Iran that would keep Israel on a leash, preventing it from attacking Iran militarily. The US president judged a military strike as being a worse evil than computer sabotage.

But there are major problems with cyber warfare as a tool of national policy. First, if the US really does want to reduce Iran's perceived nuclear threat through negotiations, covert acts of sabotage only hinder such diplomatic efforts. The fiercely nationalist Iranians will not take kindly to such acts, particularly in light of cyber warfare being part of a broader and sometimes lethal campaign widely attributed to the Mossad of Israeland Iranian dissident forces, which has also included the assassination of key Iranian nuclear scientists. Given that oil is vital to Iran's economy, might not that nation consider the type of strategic sabotage described above as an act of war?

Can we imagine how the US would react if a competing power engaged in such acts of terror against us? In fact, we don't need to: the Wall Street Journal reported a year ago that the Pentagon determined that computer sabotage may constitute an "act of war" against the United States, to which we might respond militarily. So, in effect, we are doing to Iran precisely what we've said we might attack another country for doing to us.

Second, if negotiations fail, as they had until their recent revival, then the US would be left with a bunch of sanctions and computer worms as a substitute for an articulate strategy toward Iran. If war is to be avoided, how do sanctions and cyber-attacks represent a substantive policy? As the Iraq experience taught us, failed sanctions may be merely a prelude to military operations.

There is a great danger of counterterror tactics and strategy, which includes cyber warfare, becoming a policy in and of itself. We've seen the use of drones to attack Islamist militants in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere become so common that there appears to be no other current strategy to engage these countries. Our relations with them are becoming embroiled in the controversy over drone attacks and their invasion of territorial sovereignty, crowding out any other, more constructive form of engagement.

Obama faces the same problem regarding his counterterror strategy and relations with the Arab world as outlined in Scott Shane's New York Times investigative piece, which exposed the terror kill list personally vetted and approved by the president. Instead of having a genuine policy toward the Arab world, Obama seems to have an effective drone counterterror tactic that efficiently kills reputed Islamist terrorists in numerous Arab countries (along with several hundred innocent bystanders).

There's yet another troubling element of the Stuxnet story reported by Sanger. As Gawker pointed out, the White House has not denied that it authorized the leak of classified materials that the New York Times reporter used for his story. This means the Obama administration wantsAmericans and Israelis to hear about its cyber warfare successes. Barack Obama clearly wants to burnish his national security credentials and Stuxnet allows him to do that.

The most critical long-term danger posed by cyber warfare, however, is "as ye sow so shall ye reap". In other words, now we've done it to the Iranians. But they are quick learners and shrewd. After containing the sophisticated computer worms, they will modify them for use in their own cyber warfare. What will stop Iran from doing it to us? Our cyber security experts have told us that no matter how "hard" a target we are, this country is so dependent on computer technology that there will be millions of weaknesses to exploit. A determined enemy will find a way to exploit them. If the enemy is skilled enough, the damage could be catastrophic.

What defense can we then mount as we face such a tragedy, when it is we who, in effect, have unleashed this weapon upon the world? If a building, bridge, power plant or airliner fails through such sabotage, can we truly say we are innocent victims?

Sanger's Mutually Assured Cyberdestruction makes it quite clear that the Obama administration has not plumbed the profound moral and strategic implications of the US embrace of cyber warfare against Iran and other enemies:

"'They approached the Iran issue very, very pragmatically,' one official involved in the discussions over Olympic Games [US cyber warfare program] told me. No one, he said, 'wanted to engage, at least not yet, in the much deeper, broader debate about the criteria for when we use these kinds of weapons and what message it sends to the rest of the world'."

When will we be ready to pursue this debate? After hundreds have been killed by a US nuclear plant explosion, or after one of our viruses runs rampant and poisons the water supply of a major Iranian city (to use but two of many possible examples)?

Again, once we've used this weapon on our enemies, we've opened a Pandora's Box – which others will seek to exploit also. Are we so certain that our use of the cyber weapons has been and will continue to be just, pure and morally defensible, compared to those who follow us who may or may not have our compunctions?

We should ask another question: how much benefit has the use of cyber sabotage brought us? A thousand centrifuges in Natanz (20% of Iran's inventory) destroyed. A nuclear program delayed by a few months, possibly a year. Is the potential short and long-term impact on the world worth such limited gains? Personally, we believe the national security considerations that approved the use of these cyber weapons were exceedingly short-term. We planted seeds and could reap the whirlwind.