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Nuclear plants can get double whammy from Stuxnet computer worm

“It appears that warhead one and warhead two were deployed in combination as an all-out cyberstrike against the Iranian nuclear program,”….

Worm Can Deal Double Blow to Nuclear Program, New York Times, By JOHN MARKOFF, November 19, 2010 The German software engineer who in September was the first to report that a computer worm was apparently designed to sabotage targets in Iran said Friday that the program contained two separate “digital warheads.”
The malicious program, known as Stuxnet, is designed to disable both Iranian centrifuges used to enrich uranium and steam turbines at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is scheduled to begin operation next year, said the engineer, Ralph Langner, an industrial control systems specialist based in Hamburg, Germany……..
. “It appears that warhead one and warhead two were deployed in combination as an all-out cyberstrike against the Iranian nuclear program,”….

In testimony before the Senate on Wednesday, federal and private industry officials said that the Iranian nuclear program was a probable target, but they stopped short of saying they had confirming evidence. Mr. Langner said, however, that he had found enough evidence within the programs to pinpoint the intended targets. He described his research process as being akin to being at a crime scene and examining a weapon but lacking a body.

The second code module — aimed at the nuclear power plant — was written with remarkable sophistication, he said. The worm moves from personal computers to Siemens computers that control industrial processes. It then inserts fake data, fooling the computers into thinking that the system is running normally while the sabotage of the frequency converters is taking place. “It is obvious that several years of preparation went into this….

Iran Worm Can Deal Double Blow to Nuclear Program – NYTimes.com

November 21, 2010 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | technology | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, reactors