Part1: Stuxnet was a Weapon, not a Binary — Whole Story!
Yes. Stuxnet, the strange creature of the most advanced and frightening Intelligence services of the world. I mean Mossad, CIA, and MI5.
But before I start to explain the Stuxnet story, I have to clear something for both sides. I am not a Politician. I am not a social activist. I am not a Security/Intelligence officer. Simply, I am not a guy who is looking for trouble.
I am just a Mathematics Student, Security (Militarism and Cybernetics) Researcher, and an Independent Consultant. This article is totally a research-based paper and all information gathered by the public documents and media. Nothing more, nothing less.
Nevertheless, I am going to show you why Stuxnet changed the world of security and why should we prepared ourselves for more catastrophic events. Also, I have to mention I am not going to analysis the binary itself in this article.
I will analyze the binary itself in the later or coming articles although some people do that in previous like Symantec and Kaspersky experts, although they didn’t mention or explain some important aspects of designing and sabotaging Siemens PLC which I am going to cover in these series of articles.
Nevertheless, I want just to discuss how someone or security services like NSA of the United States, GCHQ of United Kingdom, or FSB of Russia can develop such malicious software to sabotage physical devices like those IR1 centrifuges in the Nuclear Enrichment Facilities of Iran.
Introduction and overview the whole story:
I want to cover everything that related to the Stuxnet from the beginning. For example, why and when the idea of Stuxnet comes to the NSA scientists mind and how those folks with the contribution of GCHQ and 8200 unit designed, implemented and deploy it in the Nuclear Facilities of Iran’s Natanz.
This story begins around 2002 when a terrorist group called People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran with the coalition of National Council of Resistance of Iran publicly revealed the existence of two nuclear sites under construction. These sites were a Uranium Enrichment Facilities in Natanz that part of which was underground, and a Heavy Water Facilities in Arak.
I have to mention that, It has been strongly suggested that intelligence agencies like CIA and Mossad already knew about these facilities but the reports had been classified.
However, in 2002, after the report of MEK and NCR about nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, our main story begins because Western countries did not consider Iran’s nuclear activities a legitimate task with peace and development goals.
From that time on, the cold and secret war between Intelligence services of Iran (called VAJA and also intelligence department of IRGC) and the United States (CIA, DIA, NSA) and its partners, I mean five eyes coalition with by Israel began because the United States and other western countries consider Iran as their enemy and its nuclear activity is also a major threat to themselves and especially Israel.
Anyway, although the West did not consider the Iranian nuclear activities legitimate and the USA make some savage sanction against Iran in order to stop its nuclear activities, the Islamic Republic of Iran publicly said that it is going to continue its nuclear activities and It will not succumb to its desires. So yes. The cold and hidden war between Iran and the west started and increasing daily after 2002.
In short, solving the Iranian Nuclear Activities issue for the United States and its partners has been based on militarism or political negotiation. Yes, these are only two options that the USA and its coalition had, negotiation or war but as you may know, the military encounter between the United States and Iran is totally insane and it is a really bad decision.
In fact, due to the geo-strategic position that Iran has, along with the high range ballistic missiles it has, the war between the United States and Iran can drive the whole world to a catastrophic and unpredictable occasion.
As it is obvious, the situation is really complicated and dangerous for the USA leadership though the main objective of the USA is still on the table: to end the nuclear activities of Iran as soon as possible.
You know, Saying something like that is simple enough but how the USA should stop the nuclear activity of Iran practically? Iran isn’t a country like Iraq or Afghanistan who has a direct connection or dependency relationship with the USA. It has a lot of obvious and hidden potential which may make everything worse than ever for the USA and its partner in the region, especially Israel. However how the USA should resolve this threat?
With by Negotiation? It is one of the main options though, but in fact, It is totally time-consuming and not predictable. War? hahaha, are you insane? Iran is large as Europe and also it has 2 armies with the different style of militarism, In addition to its mountainous and rippling environment.
So how should the USA stop Iranian nuclear activities? Yes, the answer is Stuxnet. In this operation, the NSA and GCHQ scientists developed a malicious software (called Stuxnet) to sabotage IR1 centrifuges. After successful sabotaging of IR1 centrifuges, they have murdered main Iranian nuclear scientists to make a significant delay to repair and come back Iran to its first position.
After sabotaging and murdering, the USA made some savage sanctions against Iran to completely destruct its nuclear activities and its achievements with this assumption Iran will never make Nuclear bomb.
Yes. the USA does these operations successfully without any war or launching a ballistic missile or sending its troops to Iran. Its a big achievement from Militarism though.
This story has hacking, murdering, sabotaging, analysis, intelligence services war and also stupidness. Yeap. It is totally frightening. When I am talking about something like these things, I am totally disappointed for humanity.
Stuxnet is a Weapon, not a simple Binary dear Folks!
Some years ago, when two countries declared war to each other, they used ballistic missiles, air fighters, helicopters, different types of bombs (Nuclear, Chemical, and Clustered), submarines, warships and etc.
In the traditional wars, there were conflicts on land, sea, air, and space. All of these types of equipment that I named a few of them like air fighter and warships were used for attack or defense in those environments (land, sea, air, and space).
In the historical perspective, the evolution of human war is really interesting. War is a state of armed conflict between states, governments, societies and informal paramilitary groups, such as mercenaries, insurgents and militias.
It is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general.
Anyway, the war has been a part of human societies, and it seems that it will always be. The point is that war is just like other things developed and progressing.
As you may know, in the time of Achaemenid Empire or Roman Empire, The initial wars were on the ground with a sword and spear and slingshot.
Later, humankind was equipped with science. So they were able to build warships, guns, and cannons like France, Spanish, and the Great Britain Empire because of that capability those empires can conquer all over the world.
After World War I, everything changed completely. Because in addition to the land and sea, the phenomenon of airplanes caused the war to reach to the sky. Because of that, every country must have a force for land, a force for sea and another for air in order to protect itself from enemies completely.
As you know, One of the interesting points about the wars of human societies is the progress and developments that occur during it. For example, when the Second World War happened and the Nazis were rapidly moving towards Europe because of their ground, air, and naval powerful forces, countries such as Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union advances in its military equipments because if they didn’t progress and didn’t make some useful and powerful defensive equipment, surely Hitler will wipe out the world from their countries.
So USA, UK, France, and the Soviet Union made and achieve significant and amazing things in telecommunication, Weapons, identification, artillery, aircraft, jamming and … for defending themselves against Nazis attacks.
For example, the Germans had an advanced submarine class in their Navy known as U-boat. These submarines and other classes from the Nazi Germany submarines caused the formation of bubbles around their bodies.
It causes typical sonars can’t identifying them. Because of that, the British scientists designed the most powerful sonars to identify these Nazi U-Boat submarines to protect them from their attacks.
Sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water, such as other vessels.
Or during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Americans had a spy aircraft known as U2. The aircraft has a speed of more than 3 times the speed of sound that it causes the typical Soviet Unions radars can’t detect it on the territory of the Soviet Unions.
But when the Soviet Union was able to detect and track U2 spy aircraft due to their advances in radar systems, the Americans took a step forward and used the satellite to spy out the Soviet space. This eventually led to the establishment of satellite communications and global positioning and stuff like that.
But I want to tell you now another interesting thing. we have face another jump and another progress in the war. The initial war started from the ground and after some centuries reach to air and space. Today, the war is going more forward and reach to computer systems. So I can tell you, there is nothing meaningful as national boundaries anyway because your enemies can be on your pocket now (your mobile and your tablet or …)
This achievement is made by NSA, GCHQ and 8200 unit scientist who plans to stop nuclear activities of Iran without any physical war. They create Stuxnet for their purpose and in result made some important changes in the perspective of National security and militarism. Nevertheless, they were successful in their goal and mission.
This article was a simple overview of the story of Stuxnet and its idea. In the next chapters, I will talk more about Stuxnet and how security intelligence scientist could make another one of that.
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Email: m.kahsari@gmail.com
