WarSclerotic

US says cyberworm aids effort against Iran.

Friday, Dec 10, 2010

The US has acknowledged that the Stuxnet computer worm helped slow Iran’s nuclear programme, and has come close to admitting the existence of a secret international drive to sabotage Tehran’s progress toward the bomb.

Asked about Tehran’s recent admission that Stuxnet has affected its enrichment plant at Natanz, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons grade material, Gary Samore, President Barack Obama’s top adviser on the Iranian nuclear file, welcomed the news.

“I’m glad to hear that they are having problems with their centrifuge machines,” he told a conference in Washington, referring to the centrifuges used to enrich uranium. “The US and its allies are trying to do everything that we can to ensure that we complicate matters for them.”

In a further apparent reference to attempts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme, Mr Samore added: “Their technical problems go beyond steps that outside countries are taking.” He highlighted Tehran’s dependence on outdated technology and a limited industrial base.

The US maintains it does not know the origin of the Stuxnet virus, which has affected companies across the world though some 60 per cent of cases have been in Iran.

“It’s hard to figure out where all these things are coming from,” William Lynn, deputy defence secretary and the Pentagon’s top official on cybersecurity, told the Financial Times this week.

There has been widespread speculation that Stuxnet was developed in Israel and recent technical analyses have suggested the worm was designed to destroy centrifuges at Natanz by spinning them so fast that they break.

Last month, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s president, said that “a limited number” of centrifuges had been hit by a “software” attack while the UN’s nuclear watchdog noted that the plant temporarily halted enrichment in mid-November.

Without commenting on the origin of Stuxnet, Mr Samore argued it was essential for the US to delay Iran’s programme to “buy time” for diplomacy and ramped up sanctions.

He emphasised Iran’s nuclear programme had made less progress than either the country’s missile programme or a recently revealed North Korean enrichment plant. Indeed, he argued that “one of the most important elements” in the US approach to Pyongyang was now to “ensure that North Korea does not sell or transfer nuclear technology or materials to countries in the Middle East” – precisely because the Stalinist state’s enrichment facilities appeared more advanced than Iran’s.

He added that the US and its allies were looking for more sanctions, since talks with Iranian negotiators in Geneva this week had failed to yield any progress. The next stage of the negotiations is set to take place in Istanbul in January.

“It’s important that we take additional measures,” Mr Samore said. “That’s a way of correcting any impression that the Iranians might have that just talking for the sake of talking is going to in any way get out of them out of the sanctions noose that is tightening around their throats.”

In a report on Stuxnet issued this week, the US Congressional Research Service said: “States appear to possess a motive to develop Stuxnet because, unlike other forms of malware, the worm is not designed to steal information, but rather to target and disrupt control systems and disable operations.”

It said the US, Israel, the UK, Russia, China and France were all thought to have the expertise and motivation to develop the worm, but added: “It is likely the developer did not consider the unintended consequence of the worm becoming widely available and subject to manipulation to make it less identifiable and more potent.”

By Daniel Dombey in Washington

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