Humor for a Tuesday

Most news from the Middle East is sad or serious. So it's nice when one comes across a news item that is genuinely humorous.

Take, for instance, today's report that the Iranians discovered a Star of David on the roof of the national headquarters of Iran Air in downtown Tehran. (You can see it in the center of the picture to the left, at the point where the three wings of the building intersect.) It turns out the building was constructed by Israeli engineers sometime before the Islamic revolution in 1979. Is the Star of David deliberate, or is it simply a decorative element? No one knows for sure, but the Iranian government is very upset about the discovery and has ordered the symbol to be removed immediately.

Poor Iran! They have the Stuxnet virus gumming up their computers, and an undetected Star of David sitting on the roof of their national airline for 31 years! They must be even more paranoid about Israel!

If you would like to find the Star of David for yourself on Google Earth, go to 51.319 degrees east longitude and 35.696 degrees north latitude. Have fun...and keep smiling!

Update on Stuxnet Virus

Remember the reports on the Stuxnet virus infecting computers in Iran? (See my post from September 23 for background information.) Like so much of yesterday's news, it has seemingly slipped into oblivion. But is the story--or the virus--really gone?

Earlier this week an article appeared on the Guardian newspaper web site with further information about the virus. After several months of detailed study, computer virus experts have now concluded what was suspected all along--the Stuxnet virus was indeed designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

Symantec, the software company specializing in virus protection software, has posted a video illustrating how the virus actually worked. Stuxnet searched out specialized power drives controlling high-speed of motors, then varied the speed of the motors for short periods of time. The sudden change in speed would tear apart the equipment. The motor controllers targeted by the virus are consistent with the type of motors used to control Iran's gas centrifuges for enriching uranium.

Two questions remain unanswered. Who designed the virus...and has it been completely eradicated? No individual or nation has stepped forward to claim credit for the virus, and Iran is unlikely to share the full extent of the damage done...or whether it has really been eliminated. And one additional question remains. Was the virus only designed to attack equipment, or did it also have the ability to report back to its creator information on the content of the many computers it did infect?

I don't believe we have yet reached the end of the story!

Are Stuxnet and Bushehr related?

In August Russia announced it would begin loading nuclear fuel into the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor in Iran, giving Iran its first operational nuclear reactor...and another pathway to obtaining fuel for nuclear weapons. The world watched to see if the U.S. or Israel would attack the reactor before the fuel was loaded. (Once nuclear material was loaded into the reactor any attack would have spread nuclear contamination and brought worldwide condemnation on the attackers.) August 21, the date for loading fuel into the reactor came and went without an attack. Or did it?

In what seemed at first to be a totally unrelated event, a computer virus called Stuxnet surfaced about a year ago. This new malware baffled experts by its sophistication. Reports are now surfacing that it might be the first example of a cyber weapon, a virus designed actually to destroy a facility by directing key equipment to malfunction. Though the virus has infected a number of systems worldwide, these experts believe it was designed to seek out and destroy a specific target, and the target hasn't yet been identified.

Based on places already infected by the virus, it appears the epicenter of the attack is Iran. There is speculation the virus might have been introduced into systems there by one of the Russian contractors building the Bushehr nuclear power plant. How? Possibly by something as simple as planting the virus on a memory stick used by an individual when he came to work on the computer system for the plant.

Someone went to a lot of trouble to design this highly sophisticated computer virus. Two possibilities are the U.S. and Israel. Perhaps Israel didn't need to risk attacking the nuclear plant physically (with the potential loss of pilots and planes) because it had already developed another means of attacking the plant--one that did so from the inside.

One final thought. If this is the first example of a virus being used to physically attack a facility, it will almost certainly not be the last. The United States is also vulnerable to such attacks, perhaps even more so since we are so dependent on computer systems to run virtually all aspects of our life.

Keep watching for news about any possible delays in bringing the Bushehr nuclear power plant fully online...and watch for future reports on "weaponized" computer malware!