back to article Rogue US-Israeli cyberwar weapon 'infected Russian nuclear plant'

Stuxnet - the famous worm widely credited with crippling the Iranian nuclear weapons programme for several years - also infected the internal network of a Russian nuclear plant. Unspecified malware has even reached the International Space Station, according to the boss of Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab. Eugene Kaspersky …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    news?

    Slow news day? Someone involved selling anti virus software heard from someone down the pub that someone got a virus.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Mr ChriZ

      "Slow news day? Someone involved selling anti virus software heard from someone down the pub that someone got a virus".

      But Mr ChriZ, haven't you heard? That's not idle gossip-mongering; that's ***intelligence gathering***.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: news?

      'The charismatic securityware businessman'?

      Really?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: news?

      Security Software companies can never be seen to have defeated their enemy, they need headlines like this and the fear associated with it to perpetuate their very existence.

      Wouldn't surprise me if there happens to be a low malware virus news day they throw a few of their own concoctions out into the wild.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Cyberterrorism"

    This is clearly a systematic attack of "cyberterrorism" as people who know little about security, computing, networks or the novels of William Gibson tend to call it.

    As such, I believe the established US government doctrine is that nations that are harmed by these attacks have the right to bomb and/or invade the nation(s) responsible for them. Have I got that right?

    1. Al_21
      Paris Hilton

      Re: "Cyberterrorism"

      I thought its a fight against terror if the US Govt is involved?

      ... Fight against terror doesn't equal fight for freedom.

    2. ian 22

      Re: "Cyberterrorism"

      "the right to bomb and/or invade the nation(s) responsible for them..."

      True, however it isn't always wise to assert that right, innit.

  3. Nya

    Flash

    Was I the only one who thought what were the Russians doing moving flash drives back and forth between their plants and the Iranian ones?

    1. Crisp

      Re: Flash

      Ahhhhhh Hhhhhhha!

      1. pepper

        Re: Flash

        Not really, the plant is by Russian design partly run by Russians or so I've read a couple of years ago.

      2. Great Bu

        Re: Flash

        Will he save every one of us ?

    2. Lapun Mankimasta

      Re: Flash

      A short sharp swift google of "stuxnet" will get you any number of sites where it is defined and available, while "stuxnet source code" will get you disassembled code. It's everywhere.

  4. Crisp

    Well we know who built Stuxnet

    I suggest that the governments affected sue the perpetrators from orbit. This kind of collateral damage could have been prevented had the original developers actually targeted their attack.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Well we know who built Stuxnet

      They can just impound the ISS.

  5. Chris Miller

    Although a (modern) Stuxnet infection indicates poor computer hygiene, unmodified Stuxnet won't cause any actual damage unless you're running specific SCADA hardware and software.

  6. Random Handle

    Is nothing compared to the epidemic of tcpip.sys - which is everywhere it seems....thankfully Kaspersky is well on top of it...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So what did I learn from this

    Perhaps nothing, perhaps something. Education in poor countries still matters. Off the record, with a beer, is still more giving. Bureaucracy is slow. Linux is more secure than Windows. Flash drives are as secure as used condoms. Nobody knows everything. And apparently Australians have the ability to either speak Australian or English. Most men with a name need a hair cut, Note to my self, shut up.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      "Hallo, ich bin eine Amerikan Mathematik-Professor!"

      Were you recently exposed to,

      http://notalwayslearning.com/down-blunder/32707

      (which possibly I have given away)

  8. John LS
    Coat

    Read the title and expected a story on how the Russians were stupid enough to use windows to control a nuke plant

  9. Steven Jones

    No surprise

    Surely we already knew from Independence Day that space craft are peculiarly vulnerable to computer viruses.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No surprise

      The aliens are vulnerable too. In other news, the miners in the Andromeda galaxy got their machinery infected by Stuxnet via infected twit from Justin Biber.

      1. Steven Jones

        Re: No surprise

        Of course, HG Wells got there first - the Martians in War of the Worlds succumbed to Earthly bacteria. You'd have thought they'd have had their jabs before venturing across the void.

      2. Lapun Mankimasta

        Re: No surprise

        Don't you mean Justin Biber _is_ a twit? I don't know how he could infect the Andromeda miners, but anything's possible in this mad world.

  10. At0micAndy

    stupidity knows no national boundaries

    "The malware apparently got into the air-gapped network of the nuke plant on an infected USB stick." oh dear oh dear. Someone show them how to use a sheepdip. Please, I do not want a space station spinning out of control and crashing through my roof.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: stupidity knows no national boundaries

      I wouldn't worry about the ISS falling out of the sky - The general purpose laptops on board are just that, they have no control over the life support or guidance systems of the station.

  11. Richard Taylor 2
    Happy

    Lets face it

    it was more than air gapped…..

  12. Tom 7

    NSA outage soon then?

    sshsshshshshshhshshshshshs

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not difficult!

    Don't use USB Drives! Don't surf to that dodgy site, you don't need to see a pic of Jub, open page 3!

    Safety comes first, simple as that.

  14. Gis Bun

    The same people who open phishing scam sites opened this one. :-)

  15. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Holmes

    So *not* so carefully targetted as was originally thought.

    Shocker.

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