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."

The Cyber Threat To American Rights and Liberties

By Karen J. Greenberg,

Cyber is “a new terrain for warfare,” Panetta tells us, a “battlefield of the future.” So perhaps it’s time to ask two questions: In a world of cyber fear, what has the war on terror taught us about protecting ourselves from the excesses of government? What do policymakers, citizens, and civil libertarians need to think about when it comes to rights that would potentially be threatened in the wake of, or even in anticipation of, a cyber attack?

Here, then, are several potential threats to constitutional liberties, democratic decision-making processes, and the rule of law to watch out for in this new cyber war era:

The Threat to Privacy: In the war on terror, the government — thanks to the Patriot Act and the warrantless surveillance program, among other efforts — expanded its ability to collect information on individuals suspected of terrorism. It became a net that could snag all sorts of Americans in all sorts of ways. In cyber space, of course, the potential for collecting, sharing, and archiving data on individuals, often without a warrant, increases exponentially, especially when potential attacks may target information itself.

A recent FBI investigation illustrates the point. The Coreflood Botnet utilized viruses to steal personal and financial information from millions of Internet users, including hospitals, banks, universities, and police stations. The focus of the Coreflood threat — which also means its interface with the government — was private information. The FBI got warrants to seize the command-and-control servers that acted as an intermediary for the stolen information. At that point, the government was potentially in possession of vast amounts of private information on individual American citizens. The FBI then offered assurances that it would not access or make use of any of the personal information held on those servers.

But in an age that has become increasingly tolerant of — or perhaps resigned to — the government’s pursuit of information in violation of privacy rights, the prospects for future cyber-security policy are worrisome. After all, much of the information that might be at risk in so many potential cyber attacks — let’s say on banks — would fall into the private sphere. Yet the government, citing national security, could persuade companies to turn over that that data, store it, and use it in various ways, all the while claiming that its acts are “preventive” in nature and so not open to debate or challenge. And as in so many post-9/11 cases, the courts might back such claims up.

Once the information has been shared within the government, who’s to say how long it will be held and how it will be used in the future? Or what agency guidelines exist, if any, to ensure that it won’t be warehoused for future uses of quite a different sort? As former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff put it, “You need to have a certain amount of accountability so government doesn’t run roughshod [over people’s right to privacy] and that’s been a hard thing to architect.”

Enemy Creep: If you think it’s been difficult to reliably distinguish enemies from the rest of us in the war on terror (as in the 600 Guantanamo detainees that the Bush administration finally declared “no longer enemy combatants” and sent home), try figuring it out in cyber space. Sorting out just who launched an attack and in whose name can be excruciatingly difficult. Even if, for example, you locate the server that introduced the virus, how do you determine on whose behalf such an attack was launched? Was it a state or non-state actor? Was it a proxy or an original attack?

The crisis of how to determine the enemy in virtual space opens up a host of disturbing possibilities, not just for mistakes, but for convenient blaming. After all, George W. Bush’s top officials went to war in Iraq labeling Saddam Hussein an ally of al-Qaeda, even when they knew it wasn’t true. Who is to say that a president won’t use the very difficulty of naming an online enemy as an excuse to blame a more convenient target?

War or Crime?: And what if that enemy is domestic rather than international? Will its followers be deemed “enemy combatants” or “lawbreakers”? If this doesn’t already sound chillingly familiar to you, it should. It was an early theme of the war on terror where, beginning with its very name, “war” won out over crime.

Cyber attacks will raise similar questions, but the stakes will be even higher. Is a hacker attempting to steal money working on his own or for a terrorist group, or is he essentially a front for an enemy state eager to take down the U.S.? As Kelly Jackson Higgins, senior editor at the information security blog Dark Reading, reminds us, “Hackers posing as other hackers can basically encourage conflict among other nations or organizations, experts say, and sit back and watch.”

Expanding Presidential Fiat: National security professionals like Defense Secretary Panetta are already encouraging another cyber development that will mimic the war on terror. Crucial decisions, they argue, should be the president’s alone, leaving Congress and the American people out in the cold. President Bush, of course, reserved the right to determine who was an enemy combatant. President Obama has reserved the right to choose individuals for drone assassination on his own.

Now, an ever less checked-and-balanced executive is going to be given war powers in cyber space. In fact, we know that this is already the case, that the last two administrations have launched the first state cyber war in history — against Iran and its nuclear program. Going forward, the White House is likely to be left with the power of deciding who is a cyber attacker, and when and how such enemies should be attacked. In Panetta’s words, “If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant, physical destruction in the United States or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action against those who would attack us to defend this nation when directed by the president.”

Given the complex and secretive world of cyber attacks and cyber war, who is going to cry foul when the president alone makes such a decision? Who will even know?

Secrecy Creep: While government officials are out in full force warning of the incipient cyber threat to our way of life, it’s becoming ever clearer that the relationship between classified information, covert activities, and what the public can know is being further challenged by the new cyber world. In the war on terror years, a cult of government secrecy has spread, while Obama administration attacks on government leakers have reached new heights. On the other hand, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks made the ability to access previously classified information a household premise.

So the attempt to create an aura of secrecy around governmental acts is on the rise and yet government secrets seem ever more at risk. For example, the U.S. intended to keep the Stuxnet virus, launched anonymously against Iranian nuclear facilities, a secret. Not only did the attacks themselves become public knowledge, but eventually the American-Israeli ownership of the attack leaked out as well. The old adage “the truth will out” certainly seems alive today and yet the governmental urge for secrecy still remains ascendant.

The question is: Will there be a heightened call — however futile — for increased secrecy and the ever more draconian punishment of leakers, as has been the case in the war on terror? Will the strong arm of government threaten, in an ever more draconian manner, the media, leakers, and those demanding transparency in the name of exposing lawless policies — as has happened with CIA leaker John Kiriakou, New York Times reporter James Risen, and others?

Via: "Anti-War"

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"

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.