Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm of unidentified origin that attacks command modules for industrial equipment, is explain by some experts as a first of its kind guided cyber missile. Thanks to the worm's sophistication, doubt has lingered about its origins and exact aim since German company Siemens first educated in July that the malware was attacking its widely-used industrial control systems. Some analyst point to unexplained technological problems that have cut the number of working centrifuges in Iran's uranium enrichment program as evidence that its nuclear goal may have suffered sabotage.
Diplomats and safety sources say Western governments and Israel view sabotage as one way of slowing Iran's nuclear program, which the West suspect is aimed at making nuclear weapons but Tehran persist is for peaceful energy purposes. New research by cyber security company Symantec contains proof that actually supports the enrichment sabotage theory, pointing to tell tale signs in the way Stxunet's changes the behavior of gear known as frequency converter drives. An incidence converter drive is a power supply that can alter the regularity of the output, which controls the speed of a motor. The higher the frequency, the superior the motor's speed.
Stuxnet "sabotages" the systems the drive control, a paper posted online by Symantec researcher Eric Chien said. "We have connected a dangerous piece of the puzzle." Stuxnet's approach is to monitor the regularity of these drives and only attack ones that run between 807 Hertz (Hz) and 1210 Hz very tall speeds used only in an incomplete set of applications, including gas centrifuges. Once process at those frequencies occurs for a period of time, Stuxnet begins modify the behavior of the frequency converter drives and in result sabotages it, Symantec said. Ivanka Barzashka, a research connect at the Federation of American Scientists, said in an email that if Symantec's findings were true they were very important.
Diplomats and safety sources say Western governments and Israel view sabotage as one way of slowing Iran's nuclear program, which the West suspect is aimed at making nuclear weapons but Tehran persist is for peaceful energy purposes. New research by cyber security company Symantec contains proof that actually supports the enrichment sabotage theory, pointing to tell tale signs in the way Stxunet's changes the behavior of gear known as frequency converter drives. An incidence converter drive is a power supply that can alter the regularity of the output, which controls the speed of a motor. The higher the frequency, the superior the motor's speed.
Stuxnet "sabotages" the systems the drive control, a paper posted online by Symantec researcher Eric Chien said. "We have connected a dangerous piece of the puzzle." Stuxnet's approach is to monitor the regularity of these drives and only attack ones that run between 807 Hertz (Hz) and 1210 Hz very tall speeds used only in an incomplete set of applications, including gas centrifuges. Once process at those frequencies occurs for a period of time, Stuxnet begins modify the behavior of the frequency converter drives and in result sabotages it, Symantec said. Ivanka Barzashka, a research connect at the Federation of American Scientists, said in an email that if Symantec's findings were true they were very important.
No comments:
Post a Comment