Did Stuxnet destroy 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz?
Did Stuxnet destroy 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz?.
The Stuxnet virus that has infected Iran’s nuclear installations may have been behind the decommissioning of 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility earlier this year, according to a new analysis of the malicious software.
Prepared by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, the paper raised the possibility that the reported breakage of 1,000 centrifuges was caused by the virus.
According to the paper, the timing of the removal of 1,000 centrifuges was consistent with a statement made last month by Ali Akbar Salehi, then-head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and recently appointed as the country’s foreign minister, who confirmed in an interview: “One year and several months ago, Westerners sent a virus to [our] country’s nuclear sites.”
There are currently approximately 10,000 IR-1 centrifuges installed inside the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, according to the report.
Last week, The Jerusalem Post interviewed Ralph Langer, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze Stuxnet’s code. It was possible the worm had set back Iran’s nuclear program by two years, Langer said.
Widespread speculation has named the IDF’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200, known for its advanced signal intelligence capabilities, as the possible creator of the software, or perhaps the United States. Langer said last week that in his opinion at least two countries were behind Stuxnet.
Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, said that Iran had suspended work at its nuclear field-production facilities. While it did not specify a reason, Stuxnet was assessed to be one of the likely culprits.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the Post that during a study of the Stuxnet code, he discovered that the virus caused the engines in Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges to increase and decrease their speed. The report cited an unnamed government official who claimed that Iran usually ran its motors at 1,007 cycles per second to prevent damage, while Stuxnet seemed to increase the motor speed to 1,064 cycles per second.
“If you start changing the speed, there are vibrations and they become so severe that it can break the motor,” Albright said. “If it is true that it is attacking the IR-1, then it is changing the speed to attack the motor.”
Albright said that the number of centrifuges damaged – 1,000 – also appeared to indicate that Stuxnet – if it caused the breakage – was meant to be subtle and work slowly by causing small amounts of damage to the systems that would not make the Iranians suspect that something foreign – like malware – had been infiltrated into their computers. “It could be that Stuxnet was meant to be subtle to disrupt and break more and have less enriched uranium produced,” he said.
WarSclerotic 
December 24, 2010 at 9:36 AM
The Stuxnet Virus haas been on the wire of experimental compromises of computer systems since the computership first became a system of industrialsecurity. I believe this is something like was installed on the Russian pipelines during the cold War that destroyed Russian pipelines and electronic computerized switches and Brains as they were called in those days. The literal Brains behind these industrial machines were the Industrial Revolution of mechanized Economical strength. Which in every known Nation that was creating a modern system of accurate and dependable operations. Now a days the industrial Revolution is based in Foreign Nations and Kingdoms that are even more dependent on some of the same drive motors as have been around since the first modern computer was installed. So this is the same equivelent of an Old Security systems that were corrupted in the cold war, being that these are the same programs that havent been changed since those days.Even making them easier to manipulate.