Stuxnet is a maliciouscomputer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran.[2] Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, multiple independent news organizations recognize Stuxnet to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games.[3][4][5] The program, started during the Bush administration, was rapidly expanded within the first months of Barack Obama's presidency.[6]
Stuxnet specifically targets programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery and industrial processes including gas centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Exploiting four zero-day flaws,[7] Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software. Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs, collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast-spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart.[2] Stuxnet's design and architecture are not domain-specific and it could be tailored as a platform for attacking modern SCADA and PLC systems (e.g., in factory assembly lines or power plants), most of which are in Europe, Japan, and the United States.[8] Stuxnet reportedly destroyed almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.[9] Targeting industrial control systems, the worm infected over 200,000 computers and caused 1,000 machines to physically degrade.[10]
Stuxnet has three modules: a worm that executes all routines related to the main payload of the attack; a link file that automatically executes the propagated copies of the worm; and a rootkit component responsible for hiding all malicious files and processes, to prevent detection of Stuxnet.[11] It is typically introduced to the target environment via an infected USB flash drive, thus crossing any air gap. The worm then propagates across the network, scanning for Siemens Step7 software on computers controlling a PLC. In the absence of either criterion, Stuxnet becomes dormant inside the computer. If both the conditions are fulfilled, Stuxnet introduces the infected rootkit onto the PLC and Step7 software, modifying the code and giving unexpected commands to the PLC while returning a loop of normal operation system values back to the users.[12][13]
Discovery
Stuxnet, discovered by Sergey Ulasen from a Belarussian antivirus company VirusBlokAda, initially spread via Microsoft Windows, and targeted Siemens industrial control systems. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems,[14] nor the first publicly known intentional act of cyberwarfare to be implemented, it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems,[15] and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.[16][17]
The worm initially spreads indiscriminately, but includes a highly specialized malware payload that is designed to target only Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that are configured to control and monitor specific industrial processes.[18][19] Stuxnet infects PLCs by subverting the Step-7 software application that is used to reprogram these devices.[20][21]
Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations,[22] with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran;[21][23][24]Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60 percent of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran.[25] Siemens stated that the worm caused no damage to its customers,[15] but the Iran nuclear program, which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured secretly, was damaged by Stuxnet.[26][27][28] Kaspersky Lab concluded that the sophisticated attack could only have been conducted "with nation-state support."[29]F-Secure's chief researcher Mikko Hyppönen, when asked if possible nation-state support were involved, agreed: "That's what it would look like, yes."[30]
In May 2011, the PBS program Need To Know cited a statement by Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, in which he said, "we're glad they [the Iranians] are having trouble with their centrifuge machine and that we — the U.S. and its allies — are doing everything we can to make sure that we complicate matters for them," offering "winking acknowledgement" of United States involvement in Stuxnet.[31] According to The Daily Telegraph, a showreel that was played at a retirement party for the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gabi Ashkenazi, included references to Stuxnet as one of his operational successes as the IDF chief of staff.[32]
On 25 December 2012, an Iranian semi-official news agency announced there was a cyberattack by Stuxnet, this time on the industries in the southern area of the country. The malware targeted a power plant and some other industries in Hormozgan province in recent months.[35]
According to Eugene Kaspersky, the worm also infected a nuclear power plant in Russia. Kaspersky noted, however, that since the power plant is not connected to the public Internet, the system should remain safe.[36]
History
The worm was first identified by the security company VirusBlokAda in mid-June 2010.[20] Journalist Brian Krebs's blog posting on 15 July 2010 was the first widely read report on the worm.[37][38] The original name given by VirusBlokAda was "Rootkit.Tmphider;"[39] Symantec, however, called it "W32.Temphid," later changing to "W32.Stuxnet."[40] Its current name is derived from a combination of some keywords in the software (".stub" and "mrxnet.sys").[41][42] The reason for the discovery at this time is attributed to the virus accidentally spreading beyond its intended target (the Natanz plant) due to a programming error introduced in an update; this led to the worm spreading to an engineer's computer that had been connected to the centrifuges and spreading further when the engineer returned home and connected his computer to the internet.[33]
Kaspersky Lab experts at first estimated that Stuxnet started spreading around March or April 2010,[43] but the first variant of the worm appeared in June 2009.[20] On 15 July 2010, the day the worm's existence became widely known, a distributed denial-of-service attack was made on the servers for two leading mailing lists on industrial-systems security. This attack, from an unknown source but likely related to Stuxnet, disabled one of the lists, thereby interrupting an important source of information for power plants and factories.[38] On the other hand, researchers at Symantec have uncovered a version of the Stuxnet computer virus that was used to attack Iran's nuclear program in November 2007, being developed as early as 2005, when Iran was still setting up its uranium enrichment facility.[44]
The second variant, with substantial improvements, appeared in March 2010, apparently because its authors believed that Stuxnet was not spreading fast enough; a third, with minor improvements, appeared in April 2010.[38] The worm contains a component with a build timestamp from 3 February 2010.[45] In the United Kingdom on 25 November 2010, Sky News reported that it had received information from an anonymous source at an unidentified IT security organization that Stuxnet, or a variation of the worm, had been traded on the black market.[46]
In 2015, Kaspersky Lab noted that the Equation Group had used two of the same zero-day attacks prior to their use in Stuxnet, in another malware called fanny.bmp.[47][48] and commented that "the similar type of usage of both exploits together in different computer worms, at around the same time, indicates that the Equation Group and the Stuxnet developers are either the same or working closely together".[49]
In 2019, Chronicle researchers Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade and Silas Cutler presented evidence of at least four distinct threat actor malware platforms collaborating to create the different versions of Stuxnet.[50][51] The collaboration was dubbed 'GOSSIP GIRL' after a threat group leaked from classified CSE slides that included Flame.[52] GOSSIP GIRL is a cooperative umbrella that includes the Equation Group, Flame, Duqu, and Flowershop (also known as 'Cheshire Cat').[53][54][55]
In 2020, researcher Facundo Muñoz found evidence suggesting that Equation Group collaborated with Stuxnet developers in 2009 by lending them at least one zero-day exploit,[56] and one exploit from 2008[57] that was being actively used in-the-wild by the Conficker computer worm and Chinese hackers.[58] In 2017, a group of hackers known as The Shadow Brokers leaked a massive trove of tools belonging to Equation Group, including new versions of both exploits compiled in 2010, showing significant code overlaps as both Stuxnet's exploits and Equation Group's exploits were developed using a set of libraries called "Exploit Development Framework" also leaked by The Shadow Brokers.
Affected countries
A study of the spread of Stuxnet by Symantec showed that the main affected countries in the early days of the infection were Iran, Indonesia and India:[59]
Country
Share of infected computers
Iran
58.9%
Indonesia
18.2%
India
8.3%
Azerbaijan
2.6%
United States
1.6%
Pakistan
1.3%
Other countries
9.2%
Iran was reported to have fortified its cyberwar abilities following the Stuxnet attack, and has been suspected of retaliatory attacks against United States banks in Operation Ababil.[60]
Operation
Unlike most malware, Stuxnet does little harm to computers and networks that do not meet specific configuration requirements; "The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit... It was a marksman's job."[61] While the worm is promiscuous, it makes itself inert if Siemens software is not found on infected computers, and contains safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to more than three others, and to erase itself on 24 June 2012.[38]
For its targets, Stuxnet contains, among other things, code for a man-in-the-middle attack that fakes industrial process control sensor signals so an infected system does not shut down due to detected abnormal behavior.[38][61][62] Such complexity is very unusual for malware. The worm consists of a layered attack against three different systems:
Siemens PCS 7, WinCC and STEP7 industrial software applications that run on Windows and
One or more Siemens S7 PLCs.
Windows infection
Stuxnet attacked Windows systems using an unprecedented four zero-day attacks (plus the CPLINKvulnerability and a vulnerability used by the Conficker worm[63]). It is initially spread using infected removable drives such as USB flash drives,[21][45] which contain Windows shortcut files to initiate executable code.[64] The worm then uses other exploits and techniques such as peer-to-peerremote procedure call (RPC) to infect and update other computers inside private networks that are not directly connected to the Internet.[65][66][67] The number of zero-day exploits used is unusual, as they are highly valued and malware creators do not typically make use of (and thus simultaneously make visible) four different zero-day exploits in the same worm.[23] Amongst these exploits were remote code execution on a computer with Printer Sharing enabled,[68] and the LNK/PIF vulnerability,[69] in which file execution is accomplished when an icon is viewed in Windows Explorer, negating the need for user interaction.[70] Stuxnet is unusually large at half a megabyte in size,[65] and written in several different programming languages (including C and C++) which is also irregular for malware.[15][20][62] The Windows component of the malware is promiscuous in that it spreads relatively quickly and indiscriminately.[45]
Two websites in Denmark and Malaysia were configured as command and control servers for the malware, allowing it to be updated, and for industrial espionage to be conducted by uploading information. Both of these domain names have subsequently been redirected by their DNS service provider to Dynadot as part of a global effort to disable the malware.[67][38]
Step 7 software infection
Overview of normal communications between Step7 and a Siemens PLCOverview of Stuxnet hijacking communication between Step7 software and a Siemens PLC
According to researcher Ralph Langner,[72][73] once installed on a Windows system, Stuxnet infects project files belonging to Siemens' WinCC/PCS 7 SCADA control software[74] (Step7), and subverts a key communication library of WinCC called s7otbxdx.dll. Doing so intercepts communications between the WinCC software running under Windows and the target Siemens PLC devices, when the two are connected via a data cable. The malware is able to modify the code on PLC devices unnoticed, and subsequently to mask its presence from WinCC if the control software attempts to read an infected block of memory from the PLC system.[67]
The malware furthermore used a zero-day exploit in the WinCC/SCADA database software in the form of a hard-coded database password.[75]
PLC infection
Siemens Simatic S7-300 PLC CPU with three I/O modules attached
Stuxnet's payload targets only those SCADA configurations that meet criteria that it is programmed to identify.[38]
Stuxnet requires specific slave variable-frequency drives (frequency converter drives) to be attached to the targeted Siemens S7-300 system and its associated modules. It only attacks those PLC systems with variable-frequency drives from two specific vendors: Vacon based in Finland and Fararo Paya based in Iran.[76] Furthermore, it monitors the frequency of the attached motors, and only attacks systems that spin between 807Hz and 1,210Hz. This is a much higher frequency than motors typically operate at in most industrial applications, with the notable exception of gas centrifuges.[76] Stuxnet installs malware into memory block DB890 of the PLC that monitors the Profibus messaging bus of the system.[67] When certain criteria are met, it periodically modifies the frequency to 1,410Hz and then to 2Hz and then to 1,064Hz, and thus affects the operation of the connected motors by changing their rotational speed.[76] It also installs a rootkit – the first such documented case on this platform – that hides the malware on the system and masks the changes in rotational speed from monitoring systems.
Removal
Siemens has released a detection and removal tool for Stuxnet. Siemens recommends contacting customer support if an infection is detected and advises installing Microsoft updates for security vulnerabilities and prohibiting the use of third-party USB flash drives.[77] Siemens also advises immediately upgrading password access codes.[78]
The worm's ability to reprogram external PLCs may complicate the removal procedure. Symantec's Liam O'Murchu warns that fixing Windows systems may not fully solve the infection; a thorough audit of PLCs may be necessary. Despite speculation that incorrect removal of the worm could cause damage,[15] Siemens reports that in the first four months since discovery, the malware was successfully removed from the systems of 22 customers without any adverse effects.[77][79]
Prevention of control system security incidents,[80] such as from viral infections like Stuxnet, is a topic that is being addressed in both the public and the private sector.
The US Department of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) operates the Control System Security Program (CSSP).[81] The program operates a specialized computer emergency response team called the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), conducts a biannual conference (ICSJWG), provides training, publishes recommended practices, and provides a self-assessment tool. As part of a Department of Homeland Security plan to improve American computer security, in 2008 it and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) worked with Siemens to identify security holes in the company's widely used Process Control System 7 (PCS 7) and its software Step 7. In July 2008, INL and Siemens publicly announced flaws in the control system at a Chicago conference; Stuxnet exploited these holes in 2009.[61]
Several industry organizations[82][83] and professional societies[84][85] have published standards and best practice guidelines providing direction and guidance for control system end-users on how to establish a control system security management program. The basic premise that all of these documents share is that prevention requires a multi-layered approach, often termed defense in depth.[86] The layers include policies and procedures, awareness and training, network segmentation, access control measures, physical security measures, system hardening, e.g., patch management, and system monitoring, anti-virus and intrusion prevention system (IPS). The standards and best practices[who?] also all[improper synthesis?] recommend starting with a risk analysis and a control system security assessment.[87][88]
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(December 2017)
Experts believe that Stuxnet required the largest and costliest development effort in malware history.[38] Developing its many abilities would have required a team of highly capable programmers, in-depth knowledge of industrial processes, and an interest in attacking industrial infrastructure.[15][20] Eric Byres, who has years of experience maintaining and troubleshooting Siemens systems, told Wired that writing the code would have taken many man-months, if not man-years.[65]Symantec estimates that the group developing Stuxnet would have consisted of between five and thirty people, and would have taken six months to prepare.[89][38]The Guardian, the BBC and The New York Times all claimed that (unnamed) experts studying Stuxnet believe the complexity of the code indicates that only a nation-state would have the abilities to produce it.[23][89][90] The self-destruct and other safeguards within the code implied that a Western government was responsible, or at least is responsible for its development.[38] However, software security expert Bruce Schneier initially condemned the 2010 news coverage of Stuxnet as hype, stating that it was almost entirely based on speculation.[91] But after subsequent research, Schneier stated in 2012 that "we can now conclusively link Stuxnet to the centrifuge structure at the Natanz nuclear enrichment lab in Iran".[92]
In January 2024, de Volkskrant reported that Dutch engineer Erik van Sabben was the saboteur who had infiltrated the underground nuclear complex in the city of Natanz and installed equipment infected with Stuxnet.[93]
Iran as a target
Ralph Langner, the researcher who identified that Stuxnet infected PLCs,[21] first speculated publicly in September 2010 that the malware was of Israeli origin, and that it targeted Iranian nuclear facilities.[94] However Langner more recently, at a TED conference, recorded in February 2011, stated that, "My opinion is that the Mossad is involved, but that the leading force is not Israel. The leading force behind Stuxnet is the cyber superpower – there is only one; and that's the United States."[95] Kevin Hogan, Senior Director of Security Response at Symantec, reported that most infected systems were in Iran (about 60%),[96] which has led to speculation that it may have been deliberately targeting "high-value infrastructure" in Iran[23] including either the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant or the Natanz nuclear facility.[65][97][98] Langner called the malware "a one-shot weapon" and said that the intended target was probably hit,[99] although he admitted this was speculation.[65] Another German researcher and spokesman of the German-based Chaos Computer Club, Frank Rieger, was the first to speculate that Natanz was the target.[38]
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in September 2010 experts on Iran and computer security specialists were increasingly convinced that Stuxnet was meant "to sabotage the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz – where the centrifuge operational capacity had dropped over the past year by 30 percent."[100] On 23 November 2010 it was announced that uranium enrichment at Natanz had ceased several times because of a series of major technical problems.[101] A "serious nuclear accident" (supposedly the shutdown of some of its centrifuges[102]) occurred at the site in the first half of 2009, which is speculated to have forced Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), to resign.[103] Statistics published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) show that the number of enrichment centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4,700 to about 3,900 beginning around the time the nuclear incident WikiLeaks mentioned would have occurred.[104] The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) suggests, in a report published in December 2010, that Stuxnet is a reasonable explanation for the apparent damage[105] at Natanz, and may have destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges (10 percent) sometime between November 2009 and late January 2010. The authors conclude:
The attacks seem designed to force a change in the centrifuge’s rotor speed, first raising the speed and then lowering it, likely with the intention of inducing excessive vibrations or distortions that would destroy the centrifuge. If its goal was to quickly destroy all the centrifuges in the FEP [Fuel Enrichment Plant], Stuxnet failed. But if the goal was to destroy a more limited number of centrifuges and set back Iran’s progress in operating the FEP, while making detection difficult, it may have succeeded, at least temporarily.[105]
The worm worked by first causing an infected Iranian IR-1 centrifuge to increase from its normal operating speed of 1,064 hertz to 1,410 hertz for 15 minutes before returning to its normal frequency. Twenty-seven days later, the worm went back into action, slowing the infected centrifuges down to a few hundred hertz for a full 50 minutes. The stresses from the excessive, then slower, speeds caused the aluminium centrifugal tubes to expand, often forcing parts of the centrifuges into sufficient contact with each other to destroy the machine.[107]
According to The Washington Post, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cameras installed in the Natanz facility recorded the sudden dismantling and removal of approximately 900–1,000 centrifuges during the time the Stuxnet worm was reportedly active at the plant. Iranian technicians, however, were able to quickly replace the centrifuges and the report concluded that uranium enrichment was likely only briefly disrupted.[108]
Assuming Iran exercises caution, Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the Natanz plant. Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems. To prevent re-infection, Iran will have to exercise special caution since so many computers in Iran contain Stuxnet. Although Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy centrifuges at the Natanz facility, destruction was by no means total. Moreover, Stuxnet did not lower the production of low enriched uranium (LEU) during 2010. LEU quantities could have certainly been greater, and Stuxnet could be an important part of the reason why they did not increase significantly. Nonetheless, there remain important questions about why Stuxnet destroyed only 1,000 centrifuges. One observation is that it may be harder to destroy centrifuges by use of cyber attacks than often believed.[109]
Iranian reaction
The Associated Press reported that the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency released a statement on 24 September 2010 stating that experts from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran met in the previous week to discuss how Stuxnet could be removed from their systems.[19] According to analysts, such as David Albright, Western intelligence agencies had been attempting to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program for some time.[110][111]
The head of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant told Reuters that only the personal computers of staff at the plant had been infected by Stuxnet and the state-run newspaper Iran Daily quoted Reza Taghipour, Iran's telecommunications minister, as saying that it had not caused "serious damage to government systems".[90] The Director of Information Technology Council at the Iranian Ministry of Industries and Mines, Mahmud Liaii, has said that: "An electronic war has been launched against Iran... This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to locations outside Iran."[112]
In response to the infection, Iran assembled a team to combat it. With more than 30,000 IP addresses affected in Iran, an official said that the infection was fast spreading in Iran and the problem had been compounded by the ability of Stuxnet to mutate. Iran had set up its own systems to clean up infections and had advised against using the Siemens SCADA antivirus since it is suspected that the antivirus contains embedded code which updates Stuxnet instead of removing it.[113][114][115][116]
According to Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's government Information Technology Company, "The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading." He reported that his company had begun the cleanup process at Iran's "sensitive centres and organizations."[114] "We had anticipated that we could root out the virus within one to two months, but the virus is not stable, and since we started the cleanup process three new versions of it have been spreading", he told the Islamic Republic News Agency on 27 September 2010.[116]
On 29 November 2010, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated for the first time that a computer virus had caused problems with the controller handling the centrifuges at its Natanz facilities. According to Reuters, he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran, "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts."[117][118]
On the same day two Iranian nuclear scientists were targeted in separate, but nearly simultaneous car bomb attacks near Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Majid Shahriari, a quantum physicist, was killed. Fereydoon Abbasi, a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Defense was seriously wounded. Wired speculated that the assassinations could indicate that whoever was behind Stuxnet felt that it was not sufficient to stop the nuclear program.[119] That same Wired article suggested the Iranian government could have been behind the assassinations.[119] In January 2010, another Iranian nuclear scientist, a physics professor at Tehran University, was killed in a similar bomb explosion.[119] On 11 January 2012, a director of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was killed in an attack quite similar to the one that killed Shahriari.[120]
An analysis by the FAS demonstrates that Iran's enrichment capacity grew during 2010. The study indicated that Iran's centrifuges appeared to be performing 60% better than in the previous year, which would significantly reduce Tehran's time to produce bomb-grade uranium. The FAS report was reviewed by an official with the IAEA who affirmed the study.[121][122][123]
European and US officials, along with private experts, told Reuters that Iranian engineers were successful in neutralizing and purging Stuxnet from their country's nuclear machinery.[124]
Given the growth in Iranian enrichment ability in 2010, the country may have intentionally put out misinformation to cause Stuxnet's creators to believe that the worm was more successful in disabling the Iranian nuclear program than it actually was.[38]
Israel
Israel, through Unit 8200,[125][126] has been speculated to be the country behind Stuxnet in many media reports[89][102][127] and by experts such as Richard A. Falkenrath, former Senior Director for Policy and Plans within the US Office of Homeland Security.[128][90] Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence for Israeli newspaper Haaretz and wrote a book about Israeli intelligence, also suspected that Israel was involved, noting that Meir Dagan, the former (up until 2011) head of the national intelligence agency Mossad, had his term extended in 2009 because he was said to be involved in important projects. Additionally, in 2010 Israel grew to expect that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in 2014 or 2015 – at least three years later than earlier estimates – without the need for an Israeli military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities; "They seem to know something, that they have more time than originally thought", he added.[27][61] Israel has not publicly commented on the Stuxnet attack but in 2010 confirmed that cyberwarfare was now among the pillars of its defense doctrine, with a military intelligence unit set up to pursue both defensive and offensive options.[129][130][131] When questioned whether Israel was behind the virus in the fall of 2010, some Israeli officials[who?] broke into "wide smiles", fueling speculation that the government of Israel was involved with its genesis.[132] American presidential advisor Gary Samore also smiled when Stuxnet was mentioned,[61] although American officials have suggested that the virus originated abroad.[132] According to The Telegraph, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a video celebrating operational successes of Gabi Ashkenazi, retiring Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff, was shown at his retirement party and included references to Stuxnet, thus strengthening claims that Israel's security forces were responsible.[133]
In 2009, a year before Stuxnet was discovered, Scott Borg of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit (US-CCU)[134] suggested that Israel may prefer to mount a cyberattack rather than a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.[111] In late 2010 Borg stated, "Israel certainly has the ability to create Stuxnet and there is little downside to such an attack because it would be virtually impossible to prove who did it. So a tool like Stuxnet is Israel's obvious weapon of choice."[135] Iran uses P-1 centrifuges at Natanz, the design for which A. Q. Khan stole in 1976 and took to Pakistan. His black marketnuclear-proliferation network sold P-1s to, among other customers, Iran. Experts believe that Israel also somehow acquired P-1s and tested Stuxnet on the centrifuges, installed at the Dimona facility that is part of its own nuclear program.[61] The equipment may be from the United States, which received P-1s from Libya's former nuclear program.[136][61]
Some have also cited several clues in the code such as a concealed reference to the word MYRTUS, believed to refer to the Latin name myrtus of the Myrtle tree, which in Hebrew is called hadassah. Hadassah was the birth name of the former Jewish queen of Persia, Queen Esther.[137][138] However, it may be that the "MYRTUS" reference is simply a misinterpreted reference to SCADA components known as RTUs (Remote Terminal Units) and that this reference is actually "My RTUs"–a management feature of SCADA.[139] Also, the number 19790509 appears once in the code and may refer to the date 1979 May 09, the day Habib Elghanian, a Persian Jew, was executed in Tehran.[67][140][141] Another date that appears in the code is "24 September 2007", the day that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University and made comments questioning the validity of the Holocaust.[38] Such data is not conclusive, since, as noted by Symantec, "...attackers would have the natural desire to implicate another party".[67]
United States
There has also been reports on the involvement of the United States and its collaboration with Israel,[142][143] with one report stating that "there is vanishingly little doubt that [it] played a role in creating the worm."[38] It has been reported that the United States, under one of its most secret programs, initiated by the Bush administration and accelerated by the Obama administration,[144] has sought to destroy Iran's nuclear program by novel methods such as undermining Iranian computer systems. A leaked diplomatic cable showed how the United States was advised to target Iran's nuclear abilities through 'covert sabotage'.[145] An article in The New York Times in January 2009 credited a then-unspecified program with preventing an Israeli military attack on Iran where some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges.[146] A Wired article claimed that Stuxnet "is believed to have been created by the United States".[147] Dutch historian Peter Koop speculated that the Tailored Access Operations could have developed Stuxnet, possibly in collaboration with Israel.[148]
The fact that John Bumgarner, a former intelligence officer and member of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit (US-CCU), published an article prior to Stuxnet being discovered or deciphered, that outlined a strategic cyber strike on centrifuges[149] and suggests that cyber attacks are permissible against nation states which are operating uranium enrichment programs that violate international treaties gives some credibility to these claims. Bumgarner pointed out that the centrifuges used to process fuel for nuclear weapons are a key target for cybertage operations and that they can be made to destroy themselves by manipulating their rotational speeds.[150]
In a March 2012 interview with 60 Minutes, retired US Air Force General Michael Hayden – who served as director of both the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency – while denying knowledge of who created Stuxnet said that he believed it had been "a good idea" but that it carried a downside in that it had legitimized the use of sophisticated cyber weapons designed to cause physical damage. Hayden said, "There are those out there who can take a look at this... and maybe even attempt to turn it to their own purposes". In the same report, Sean McGurk, a former cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security noted that the Stuxnet source code could now be downloaded online and modified to be directed at new target systems. Speaking of the Stuxnet creators, he said, "They opened the box. They demonstrated the capability... It's not something that can be put back."[151]
Joint effort and other states and targets
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(June 2012)
In April 2011, Iranian government official Gholam Reza Jalali stated that an investigation had concluded that the United States and Israel were behind the Stuxnet attack.[152] Frank Rieger stated that three European countries' intelligence agencies agreed that Stuxnet was a joint United States-Israel effort. The code for the Windows injector and the PLC payload differ in style, likely implying collaboration. Other experts believe that a US-Israel cooperation is unlikely because "the level of trust between the two countries' intelligence and military establishments is not high."[38]
A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B. Alexander stated: "And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack. The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s."[153]
China,[154]Jordan, and France are other possibilities, and Siemens may have also participated.[38][142] Langner speculated that the infection may have spread from USB drives belonging to Russian contractors since the Iranian targets were not accessible via the Internet.[21][155] In 2019, it was reported that an Iranian mole working for Dutch intelligence at the behest of Israel and the CIA inserted the Stuxnet virus with a USB flash drive or convinced another person working at the Natanz facility to do so.[156][157]
Sandro Gaycken from the Free University Berlin argued that the attack on Iran was a ruse to distract from Stuxnet's real purpose. According to him, its broad dissemination in more than 100,000 industrial plants worldwide suggests a field test of a cyber weapon in different security cultures, testing their preparedness, resilience, and reactions, all highly valuable information for a cyberwar unit.[158]
In July 2013, Edward Snowden claimed that Stuxnet was cooperatively developed by the United States and Israel.[160]
Deployment in North Korea
According to a report by Reuters, the NSA also tried to sabotage North Korea's nuclear program using a version of Stuxnet. The operation was reportedly launched in tandem with the attack that targeted Iranian centrifuges in 2009–10. The North Korean nuclear program shares many similarities with the Iranian, both having been developed with technology transferred by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The effort failed, however, because North Korea's extreme secrecy and isolation made it impossible to introduce Stuxnet into the nuclear facility.[161]
Stuxnet 2.0 cyberattack
In 2018, Gholamreza Jalali, Iran's chief of the National Passive Defence Organisation (NPDO), claimed that his country fended off a Stuxnet-like attack targeting the country's telecom infrastructure. Iran's Telecommunications minister Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi has since accused Israel of orchestrating the attack. Iran plans to sue Israel through the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and is also willing to launch a retaliation attack if Israel does not desist.[162]
Related malware
"Stuxnet's Secret Twin"
A November 2013 article[163] in Foreign Policy magazine claims existence of an earlier, much more sophisticated attack on the centrifuge complex at Natanz, focused on increasing centrifuge failure rate over a long time period by stealthily inducing uranium hexafluoride gas overpressure incidents. This malware was capable of spreading only by being physically installed, probably by previously contaminated field equipment used by contractors working on Siemens control systems within the complex. It is not clear whether this attack attempt was successful, but it being followed by a different, simpler and more conventional attack is indicative.
On 1 September 2011, a new worm was found, thought to be related to Stuxnet. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics analyzed the malware, naming the threat Duqu.[164][165]Symantec, based on this report, continued the analysis of the threat, calling it "nearly identical to Stuxnet, but with a completely different purpose", and published a detailed technical paper.[166] The main component used in Duqu is designed to capture information[62] such as keystrokes and system information. The exfiltrated data may be used to enable a future Stuxnet-like attack. On 28 December 2011, Kaspersky Lab's director of global research and analysis spoke to Reuters about recent research results showing that the platform Stuxnet and Duqu both originated in 2007, and is being referred to as Tilded due to the ~d at the beginning of the file names. Also uncovered in this research was the possibility for three more variants based on the Tilded platform.[167]
In May 2012, the new malware "Flame" was found, thought to be related to Stuxnet.[168] Researchers named the program "Flame" after the name of one of its modules.[168] After analysing the code of Flame, Kaspersky Lab said that there is a strong relationship between Flame and Stuxnet. An early version of Stuxnet contained code to propagate infections via USB drives that is nearly identical to a Flame module that exploits the same vulnerability.[169]
Media coverage
Since 2010, there has been extensive international media coverage on Stuxnet and its aftermath. In early commentary, The Economist pointed out that Stuxnet was "a new kind of cyber-attack."[170] On 8 July 2011, Wired then published an article detailing how network security experts were able to decipher the origins of Stuxnet. In that piece, Kim Zetter claimed that Stuxnet's "cost–benefit ratio is still in question."[171] Later commentators tended to focus on the strategic significance of Stuxnet as a cyber weapon. Following the Wired piece, Holger Stark called Stuxnet the "first digital weapon of geopolitical importance, it could change the way wars are fought."[172] Meanwhile, Eddie Walsh referred to Stuxnet as "the world's newest high-end asymmetric threat."[173] Ultimately, some claim that the "extensive media coverage afforded to Stuxnet has only served as an advertisement for the vulnerabilities used by various cybercriminal groups."[174] While that may be the case, the media coverage has also increased awareness of cyber security threats.
Alex Gibney's 2016 documentary Zero Days covers the phenomenon around Stuxnet.[175] A zero-day (also known as 0-day) vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to, or unaddressed by, those who should be interested in mitigating the vulnerability (including the vendor of the target software). Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect computer programs, data, additional computers or a network.
In 2016, it was revealed that General James Cartwright, the former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, had leaked information related to Stuxnet. He later pleaded guilty for lying to FBI agents pursuing an investigation into the leak.[176][177] On 17 January 2017, he was granted a full pardon in this case by President Obama, thus expunging his conviction.
In popular culture
Besides the aforementioned Alex Gibney documentary Zero Days (2016), which looks into the malware and the cyberwarfare surrounding it, other works which reference Stuxnet include:
In Castle, season 8, episode 18 "Backstabber" Stuxnet is revealed to have been (fictionally) created by MI6, and a version of it is used to take down the London power grid.
Trojan Horse is a novel written by Windows utility writer and novelist Mark Russinovich. It features the usage of the Stuxnet virus as a main plot line for the story, and the attempt of Iran to bypass it.
In Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Stuxnet is the named type of computer virus which infected Kusanagi and Manamura allowing false memories to be implanted.
In Ubisoft's 2013 video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the protagonist, Sam Fisher, makes use of a mobile, airborne headquarters ("Paladin") which is said at one point within the game's story mode to have been targeted by a Stuxnet-style virus, causing its systems to fail and the plane to careen towards the ocean, and would have crashed without Fisher's intervening.[178]
In Michael Mann's 2015 movie Blackhat, the code shown as belonging to a virus used by a hacker to cause the coolant pumps explosion in a nuclear plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, is actual Stuxnet decompiled code.
In the third episode of Star Trek: Discovery, "Context Is for Kings", characters identify a segment of code as being part of an experimental transportation system. The code shown is decompiled Stuxnet code.[179] Much of the same code is shown in the eighth episode of The Expanse, "Pyre", this time as a visual representation of a "diagnostic exploit" breaking into the control software for nuclear missiles.
This timeline of computer viruses and worms presents a chronological timeline of noteworthy computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, similar malware, related research and events.
Creating a unified list of computer viruses is challenging due to inconsistent naming conventions. To combat computer viruses and other malicious software, many security advisory organizations and anti-virus software developers compile and publish virus lists. When a new virus appears, the rush begins to identify and understand it as well as develop appropriate counter-measures to stop its propagation. Along the way, a name is attached to the virus. Since anti-virus software compete partly based on how quickly they react to the new threat, they usually study and name the viruses independently. By the time the virus is identified, many names have been used to denote the same virus.
Natanz is a city in the Central District of Natanz County, Isfahan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district. It is 70 kilometres (43 mi) south-east of Kashan.
Oghab 2 is an Iranian counter-espionage agency tasked to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from threats, including sabotage and cyber warfare. According to The New York Times, Iran has acknowledged that it is fighting nuclear espionage, and has foiled attempts to recruit spies and defectors to pass secrets out of their enrichment facilities. The New York Times also states this may be due to efforts rumoured to have started under the George W. Bush administration in the United States to sabotage parts imported into Iran. It is claimed these efforts were accelerated under President Barack Obama's administration, with the facilities facing trouble with poor designs and difficulty obtaining parts, due to sanctions imposed by the United Nations.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has repeatedly intervened in the internal affairs of Iran, from the Mosaddegh coup of 1953 to the present day. The CIA is said to have collaborated with the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Its personnel may have been involved in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. More recently in 2007-8 CIA operatives were claimed to be supporting the Sunni terrorist group Jundallah against Iran, but these claims were refuted by a later investigation.
A supply chain attack is a cyber-attack that seeks to damage an organization by targeting less secure elements in the supply chain. A supply chain attack can occur in any industry, from the financial sector, oil industry, to a government sector. A supply chain attack can happen in software or hardware. Cybercriminals typically tamper with the manufacturing or distribution of a product by installing malware or hardware-based spying components. Symantec's 2019 Internet Security Threat Report states that supply chain attacks increased by 78 percent in 2018.
Kaspersky Lab is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky and Alexey De-Monderik. Kaspersky Lab develops and sells antivirus, internet security, password management, endpoint security, and other cybersecurity products and services.
The Stars virus is a computer virus which infects computers running Microsoft Windows. It was named and discovered by Iranian authorities in April 2011. Iran claimed it was used as a tool to commit espionage. Western researchers came to believe it is probably the same thing as the Duqu virus, part of the Stuxnet attack on Iran.
Duqu is a collection of computer malware discovered on 1 September 2011, thought by Kaspersky Labs to be related to the Stuxnet worm and to have been created by Unit 8200. Duqu has exploited Microsoft Windows's zero-day vulnerability. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary discovered the threat, analysed the malware, and wrote a 60-page report naming the threat Duqu. Duqu got its name from the prefix "~DQ" it gives to the names of files it creates.
Flame, also known as Flamer, sKyWIper, and Skywiper, is modular computer malware discovered in 2012 that attacks computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The program is used for targeted cyber espionage in Middle Eastern countries.
Operation Olympic Games was an ostensible and still unacknowledged campaign of sabotage by means of cyber disruption, directed at Iranian nuclear facilities likely by the United States and Israel. As reported, it is one of the first known uses of offensive cyber weapons. Started under the administration of George W. Bush in 2006, Olympic Games was accelerated under President Obama, who heeded Bush's advice to continue cyber attacks on the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. Bush believed that the strategy was the only way to prevent an Israeli conventional strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Mahdi is computer malware that was initially discovered in February 2012 and was reported in July of that year. According to Kaspersky Lab and Seculert, the software has been used for targeted cyber espionage since December 2011, infecting at least 800 computers in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. Mahdi is named after files used in the malware and refers to the Muslim figure.
Cyberweapons are commonly defined as malware agents employed for military, paramilitary, or intelligence objectives as part of a cyberattack. This includes computer viruses, trojans, spyware, and worms that can introduce malicious code into existing software, causing a computer to perform actions or processes unintended by its operator.
Seculert was a cloud-based cyber security technology company based in Petah Tikva, Israel. The company's technology was designed to detect breaches and advanced persistent threats (APTs), attacking networks. Seculert's business was based on malware research and the ability to uncover malware that has gone undetected by other traditional measures.
The vulnerability of nuclear plants to deliberate attack is of concern in the area of nuclear safety and security. Nuclear power plants, civilian research reactors, certain naval fuel facilities, uranium enrichment plants, fuel fabrication plants, and even potentially uranium mines are vulnerable to attacks which could lead to widespread radioactive contamination. The attack threat is of several general types: commando-like ground-based attacks on equipment which if disabled could lead to a reactor core meltdown or widespread dispersal of radioactivity; external attacks such as an aircraft crash into a reactor complex, or cyber attacks.
Regin is a sophisticated malware and hacking toolkit used by United States' National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). It was first publicly revealed by Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and The Intercept in November 2014. The malware targets specific users of Microsoft Windows-based computers and has been linked to the US intelligence-gathering agency NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ. The Intercept provided samples of Regin for download, including malware discovered at a Belgian telecommunications provider, Belgacom. Kaspersky Lab says it first became aware of Regin in spring 2012, but some of the earliest samples date from 2003. Among computers infected worldwide by Regin, 28 percent were in Russia, 24 percent in Saudi Arabia, 9 percent each in Mexico and Ireland, and 5 percent in each of India, Afghanistan, Iran, Belgium, Austria, and Pakistan.
Duqu 2.0 is a version of malware reported in 2015 to have infected computers in hotels of Austria and Switzerland that were sites of the international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and economic sanctions. The malware, which infected Kaspersky Lab for months without their knowledge, is believed to be the work of Unit 8200, an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces. The New York Times alleges this breach of Kaspersky in 2014 is what allowed Israel to notify the US of Russian hackers using Kaspersky software to retrieve sensitive data.
Schmitt analysis is a legal framework developed in 1999 by Michael N. Schmitt, leading author of the Tallinn Manual, for deciding if a state's involvement in a cyber-attack constitutes a use of force. Such a framework is important as part of international law's adaptation process to the growing threat of cyber-warfare. The characteristics of a cyber-attack can determine which legal regime will govern state behavior, and the Schmitt analysis is one of the most commonly used ways of analyzing those characteristics. It can also be used as a basis for training professionals in the legal field to deal with cyberwarfare.
Fileless malware is a variant of computer related malicious software that exists exclusively as a computer memory-based artifact i.e. in RAM. It does not write any part of its activity to the computer's hard drive, thus increasing its ability to evade antivirus software that incorporate file-based whitelisting, signature detection, hardware verification, pattern-analysis, time-stamping, etc., and leaving very little evidence that could be used by digital forensic investigators to identify illegitimate activity. Malware of this type is designed to work in memory, so its existence on the system lasts only until the system is rebooted.
2021 Natanz Incident refers to a suspected attack on the Natanz nuclear site in Iran. The Natanz nuclear facility is located in the wilderness of the province of Isfahan, in central Iran. This site is scouted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
↑ Gross, Michael Joseph (April 2011). "A Declaration of Cyber-War". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 31 August 2021. Retrieved 31 December 2015.
↑ Marty Edwards (Idaho National Laboratory) & Todd Stauffer (Siemens). 2008 Automation Summit: A User's Conference(PDF). United States Department of Homeland Security. p.35. Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 January 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
↑ Byres, Eric; Cusimano, John (16 February 2012). "The 7 Steps to ICS Security". Tofino Security and exida Consulting LLC. Archived from the original on 23 January 2013. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
↑ Modderkolk, Huib (8 January 2024). "Sabotage in Iran: Een missie in duisternis"[Sabotage in Iran: A Mission in Darkness]. De Volksrant (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 8 January 2024. Retrieved 8 January 2024.
↑ Aneja, Atul (26 September 2010). "Under cyber-attack, says Iran". The Hindu. Chennai, India. Archived from the original on 29 September 2010. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
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