Does computer worm "stuxnet" attack Iranian Nuclear Program?

[Jan Klimkowski]

In addition to being warfare against a nation state (Iran), using cyberspace, this is also warfare against a multinational.

Step 7 is the Siemens software used to program and configure the German company's industrial control system hardware. When Stuxnet detects Step 7 software, it tries to hijack the program and pass control to outsiders.

"All Step 7 projects [on a compromised computer] are infected by Stuxnet," O Murchu said in an interview today. "Anyone who opens a project infected by Stuxnet is then compromised by the worm."

(snip)

Siemens has admitted that 14 plants, many of them in Germany, were infected with Stuxnet, but it has not provided details on how the worm wriggled into those facilities.

The just-discovered way that Stuxnet spreads means that cleaning up after the worm will be more difficult, O Murchu said.

Earlier, O Murchu and others who have dug into Stuxnet, argued that the malware's complex construction and advanced techniques indicated it was the work of a state-backed group. The Step 7 infection vector is another clue of that, O Murchu said today.

"This is a very remarkable feature," he said. "Step 7 is fairly proprietary software, and whoever created Stuxnet had to know that program very well. It's certainly not something simple."

Siemens must be furious if a major First World intelligence operation (be it DIA, Mossad or whomever) has designed malware which targets Siemens proprietary "industrial control system" software such as "Step 7".

I wonder if the cyber warrriors designed an anti-virus?

Or whether Siemens software is fucked until their own crack programmers come up with one?

State, spook and multinational warfare taking place in cyberspace.

William "noir prophet" Gibson's cybervision is beginning to come to pass.