Stuxnet Product of US and Israel

The New York Times is reporting in Sunday's editions that the Stuxnet computer worm was tested at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility (Hat Tip: NY Nana).

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.

...

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults.

“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.

Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.

...

By the accounts of a number of computer scientists, nuclear enrichment experts and former officials, the covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing, from the Germans and the British.

The project’s political origins can be found in the last months of the Bush administration. In January 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to undermine the electrical and computer systems around Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center. President Obama, first briefed on the program even before taking office, sped it up, according to officials familiar with the administration’s Iran strategy. So did the Israelis, other officials said. Israel has long been seeking a way to cripple Iran’s capability without triggering the opprobrium, or the war, that might follow an overt military strike of the kind they conducted against nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

Two years ago, when Israel still thought its only solution was a military one and approached Mr. Bush for the bunker-busting bombs and other equipment it believed it would need for an air attack, its officials told the White House that such a strike would set back Iran’s programs by roughly three years. Its request was turned down.

Now, Mr. Dagan’s statement suggests that Israel believes it has gained at least that much time, without mounting an attack. So does the Obama administration.

For years, Washington’s approach to Tehran’s program has been one of attempting “to put time on the clock,” a senior administration official said, even while refusing to discuss Stuxnet. “And now, we have a bit more.”

...

Dr. Cohen said his sources told him that Israel succeeded — with great difficulty — in mastering the centrifuge technology. And the American expert in nuclear intelligence, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Israelis used machines of the P-1 style to test the effectiveness of Stuxnet.

The expert added that Israel worked in collaboration with the United States in targeting Iran, but that Washington was eager for “plausible deniability.”

Read the whole thing.

Heh.

Labels: Dimona nuclear reactor, Iranian nuclear program, Natanz, Stuxnet

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:17 AM

You might like:

* Different Types of Law (eHow)
* Dead nuclear scientist headed Iran's response team to Stuxnet (this site)
* Interview with Egyptian Christian Copt :: Israel Matzav (this site)
* Gabrielle Giffords was shot because she is Jewish (this site)

(Selected for you by our sponsor )

5 Comments:

At 4:35 AM, Blogger bacci40 said...

now this i can buy

the idea that israel alone created the worm, made no sense at all

At 4:49 AM, Blogger NY Nana said...

Shavua Tov, Carl

Thanks for the hat tip. Quite an article, and that al-NYT was actually not going after Israel, but seemingly decent, was nearly a bigger surprise than the co-operation between Israel and the USA with Hussein approving.

I am imagining the Iranians sitting there freaking out!

G-d bless Israel!

At 4:53 AM, Blogger Daniel said...

Why didn't the US do it?

At 6:13 AM, Blogger biorabbi said...

Fascinating article. It appears to have been a joint CIA-Mossad operation in the high-tech sphere with help from England and, curiously, Germany though their industrial know how.

What piqued my interest is that Stuxnet may not have finished its mission of rotary destruction. I think it's also smart for Israel and Washington to continue to leak out details as this will help dissent in Iran. How does it look if Iran's program cannot be protected by their regime?

The outgoing head of Mossad is a hero of mine. Job well done indeed!

At 11:02 AM, Blogger Sparky the Wonder Dog said...

"President Obama, first briefed on the program even before taking office, sped it up, according to officials familiar with the administration’s Iran strategy. So did the Israelis..."

silver lining


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About Me

Name: Carl in Jerusalem
Location: Jerusalem, Israel

Meir Dagan and the Mossad

Yossi Melman reviews Meir Dagan's tenure as chairman of the Mossad.

His hidden legacy lies in the hundreds of covert operations for which neither the Mossad nor the government of Israel will ever claim responsibility. They have resulted in the slowing of Iran’s nuclear program; in killing some of the most dangerous terrorists, including Imad Mughniyeh, who Dagan labeled “Hezbollah’s chief of staff”; and—most impressively—the intelligence-gathering that led to the destruction, in minutes, of Syria’s secret plutonium-producing nuclear reactor. This last effort has since become a test case of how precise intelligence data can be turned into a military result with strategic and historical implications.

Perhaps Dagan’s best-publicized triumph, the Syrian operation showcased his ability to respond quickly, forcefully, and creatively to new threats—and to squeeze maximum advantage out of his successes. Because of President Bashar Assad’s deception, for seven years no one—not Syrian ally Iran, not the CIA, neither French nor Israeli intelligence—had a clue about the North Korean-built reactor until April 2007, when Mossad agents discovered that Syria was within months of becoming a nuclear power. Dagan wasted little time. In September of that year, eight Israeli Air Force fighter planes and bombers destroyed the reactor. Israel never took responsibility for the attack. But Dagan’s people showed photos of the reactor before and after its destruction to the CIA, which presented the intelligence to Congress, creating the impression that the CIA was somehow involved in the operation.

Dagan didn’t stop there. One of the few Syrians who knew of the reactor was General Muhammad Sulliman, Assad’s point man to North Korea, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Nearly a year after the destruction of the reactor, on a Friday night in August 2008, while entertaining some guests, the general was shot dead at his chalet in the prestigious Rimal al-Zahabieh seafront resort, 10 miles north of the Mediterranean port city of Tartous. A sniper, apparently aboard a ship in the sea, shot Sulliman in the head.

...

But the most daring effort attributed to the Mossad was the set of assassinations in 2010 of leading Iranian scientists in Tehran, who were killed in three separate incidents by bombs that exploded while they were driving to their offices. Though the targets were nominally teachers at various Iranian universities, all secretly worked for Iran’s nuclear military program. Two were killed, and one—Firudan Abbasi, a top expert of the weaponization group—was critically injured. Although the Mossad never takes credit for such assassination operations, the prevailing view around the globe, and especially in Iran, is that combatants from Mossad’s special-ops unit, Kidon (which means “bayonet”), were responsible for the clean job. All the combatants returned home safely. All the targets were eliminated or removed. No fingerprints were left.

And the same can be said about the January 2010 assassination of al-Mabhouh in Dubai—even though the operation resulted in what was perhaps the Mossad’s worst press ever. The conventional wisdom in Israel and abroad is that the Mossad botched the operation, because Dubai police deciphered and solved the mystery of al-Mabhoh’s death. This was the argument made by Dubai’s energetic police commissioner, General Dahi Khalfan, who blamed the Mossad for the operation and presented names and photos of roughly 20 supposed Mossad agents taken by security cameras both before and after the killing at various hotels and the local airport.

But there remains not one inch of evidence to support Khalfan’s claim. The target, al-Mabhouh, was killed by poison. No one was arrested, and all combatants returned home safely. To this day, no one really knows who the assassins were or where they are today. They used fabricated or borrowed passports and credit cards, so there’s little chance that they will be recognized. And a strong message of deterrence was sent to Hamas leadership, which suffered a major blow and is still in search of a suitable replacement for the experienced al-Mabhouh. They will eventually find one, but this is the nature of the war between a state and a terrorist organization: It is a war of mutual attrition, not one of knock-outs.

Meir Dagan will continue to grow larger than life. And he deserves it.

Labels: Meir Dagan, Mossad

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:38 AM

Spies Sabotaged Iran Nuke Program not POTUS

Jeffrey Goldberg titles his latest column regarding the prospects for a nuclear ou might like:
Iran, "A Major Victory for President Obama on Iran."

Much credit in delaying Iran goes to the unknown inventor of Stuxnet, the miracle computer virus, which has bollixed-up Iran's centrifuges; much credit goes to the Mossad and the CIA and the Brits and God knows who else, who are working separately and in tandem to subvert the Iranian program, and a great deal of credit must go to, yes, President Barack Obama, who has made stopping Iran one of his two or three main foreign policy priorities over the past two years. He did the difficult work of pulling together serious multilateral sanctions against Iran; he has convinced the Israelis -- at least he has partially convinced some Israelis -- that he has placed the prestige of his presidency behind this effort, and that he sincerely and deeply understands why it is in no one's interest to see Iran with a bomb, and he has supported, in ways that I only know the most general way, some very hard-edged counterproliferation programs, programs whose existence proves, among other things, that he is capable of real and decisive toughness. [Emphasis mine]

Unless Goldberg knows something that we don't - namely that the US under Obama is taking the lead role behind Stuxnet and the disappearance of Iranian nuclear scientists (which Goldberg doesn't really mention), he is giving Obama far too much credit for what has happened.

Without Stuxnet and without the liquidations of Iran's nuclear scientists, the sanctions would be having much less of an effect, if any at all.

And for far too long in this administration, the priority was not on stopping Iran, but on stopping Israel. If anyone deserves credit for the sanctions, it's not Obama, but the Congress, which dragged him into them kicking and screaming.

If anything, Goldberg's comments on Obama's role in Iran remind me of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's comments on the morning after the underwear bomber last Christmas. Napolitano said "the system worked." No, the system didn't work, but we managed to avoid the problem anyway thanks to others who were vigilant about the event not happening, so it looked a little bit like the system worked.

The same is true here. The sanctions were too little and too late to stop Iran (although, if continued and intensified, they could yet help), but others - the inventors of Stuxnet, the bombers of motorcycles and the encouragers of defection - were the ones who have set Iran back.

Labels: Barack Obama, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Jeffrey Goldberg, Stuxnet

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:23 PM

Obama Lied; Will Israelis Die?

On Friday, I reported that Israel would not bomb the Bushehr nuclear reactor or any other Iranian facility - for now - because the Obama administration had 'convinced' Israel that the Iranians will not have nuclear weapons for at least another twelve months. Gary Milhollin, the executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, writes that Obama (or his administration) lied. Iran's nuclear clock has not slowed (Hat Tip: Yochanan).

The clock is still ticking, vigorously. By the beginning of this year, Iran had produced enough low-enriched uranium to fuel two nuclear weapons if the uranium were further enriched to weapon-grade. By now, Iran has added almost enough of this low-enriched uranium to fuel a third weapon, and by the middle of next year (at the current production rate), it will probably produce enough to fuel a fourth. To make matters worse, in February, the Iran started to further enrich this uranium to a higher level, a level at which the Islamic Republic will have accomplished 90 percent of the work needed to raise its enrichment to weapon-grade. All this is happening at a time when Iran is successfully fielding ballistic missiles that can carry a nuclear payload far enough to reach Israel.

To allay fears about Iran's progress, the administration is claiming that it could take Tehran as much as a year to raise its low-enriched uranium to weapon-grade. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while acknowledging that it could, indeed, take this long, says also that it could take as little as three months. Theoretical calculations based on Iran's known capacity support the IAEA's lower figure. There is also the risk that Iran has one or more secret centrifuge sites (it was caught building one recently). If even one such site exists, the administration's estimate -- based on the sites that we know exist -- becomes meaningless.

But why quibble about how long the final phase of bomb making might take? Instead, we should keep our eyes on the big fact here, which is that Iran is fast approaching the status of a "virtual" nuclear weapon state -- one with the ability to kick out UN inspectors and build a handful of nuclear warheads.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl