Stuxnet, the first cyber warrior, stalls Iran’s nuclear ambitions

Vancouver Sun--Targeted attack fells enrichment facility

The computer virus attack on Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz is the first documented offensive on the battlefield of cyber-warfare.

But even though what happened at Natanz at the end of 2009 and early last year has been exhaustively dissected by independent analysts such as those at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C., there are still many questions.

For example, the precise aims and therefore the level of success of the attack are not known.

What is clear is that the computer virus known as Stuxnet was designed specifically to target the electronic systems controlling the speed of the ranks of thousands of two-metre tall centrifuges Iran uses to spin and thus concentrate the gas uranium hexaflouride.

Iran says it is only enriching uranium to the low levels required to make fuel for civilian nuclear reactors, but most of the rest of the world believes Tehran is trying to acquire the capacity to make highly enriched uranium suitable for manufacturing nuclear weapons.

Stuxnet, which has been described by a computer security expert as "a marksman’s job," was written specifically to increase the wall speed of the Pakistan-designed IR-1 centrifuges obtained illicitly by Iran to nearly 450 metres a second.

Those who know about the Iranian uranium enrichment system -and whoever designed Stuxnet knew in great detail about the centrifuges right down to which companies supplied the speed control systems and how they worked -would realize that at that speed the centrifuges would simply fly apart and shatter.

That seems to be what happened to 984 of the enrichment machines between November 2009 and the end of January 2010.

That number is no coincidence. The Stuxnet worm was written specifically to attack 984 linked control systems made by the German-based multinational Siemens. Continued…