Tag: Iran

Politics

Atomic Labs Across the U.S. Race to Stop Iran

peteware

Interesting article in the NY Times about how scientists in nuclear research labs in the US aided the negotiations with Iran

It was over one of those dinners in Vienna last summer that several of the experts began wondering how they might find a face-saving way for Iran to convert its deep-underground enrichment plant at Fordo, a covert site exposed by the United States five years ago, into a research center. That would enable Iran to say the site was still open, and the United States could declare it was no longer a threat.“The question was what kind of experiment you can do deep underground,” recalled a participant in the dinner.

Source: Atomic Labs Across the U.S. Race to Stop Iran – NYTimes.com

News · Technology

Iranian Hackers Suspected in Recent Security Breach

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Looks like Iranian Hackers Suspected in Recent Security Breach are either trying to get back for Stuxnet and more on Stuxnet. More likely it was for a man-in-the-middle attack to install viruses or trojan horse by posing as the actual company and uploading a compromised version of the software. The compromised software could make it easier to monitor social networking sites, etc.

Comodo, a digital certificate authority and security software maker, said on Wednesday that it unwittingly issued fraudulent digital certificates for Web sites operated by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype and Mozilla. Digital certificates are used to vouch for the authenticity of a site owner and facilitate encrypted communications between sites and their users. Comodo revoked all of the certificates immediately upon discovery of the incident and notified the site owners, the major browser makers and relevant government authorities, it said.

Politics · Technology

More on Stuxnet Worm and Iran’s Nuclear Research

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Last month there was an article about a virus that targetted Iran’s Nuclear Research. There’s a little more on Stuxnet worm in the NY Times.
From Stuxnet Worm Used Against Iran Was Tested in Israel:

The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

Politics · Technology

Virus that targeted Iranian nuclear sites

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Based on [this](http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/) article it sounds like some really talented developers (NSA) wrote a virus that targetted specific computers in Iran and had enough knowledge to target specific computer controlled equipment.

At Natanz, for almost 17 months, Stuxnet quietly worked its way into the system and targeted a specific component — the frequency converters made by the German equipment manufacturer Siemens that regulated the speed of the spinning centrifuges used to create nuclear fuel. The worm then took control of the speed at which the centrifuges spun, making them turn so fast in a quick burst that they would be damaged but not destroyed. And at the same time, the worm masked that change in speed from being discovered at the centrifuges’ control panel.