In January 2010, inspectors with the UN’s nuclear monitoring agency noticed something
strange at the nuclear facility in Natanz, Iran.
Numerous centrifuges at the crown jewel of Iran’s nuclear program were failing.
Centrifuges are devices that produce enriched uranium which can be used to make nuclear
weapons.
The cause of their failure was a mystery.
It’s believed the U.S. and Israel ordered a cyberattack to slow down Iran’s nuclear
program.
A computer worm called Stuxnet traveled on USB thumb drives and spread through Microsoft
Windows computers that controlled the centrifuges, sending instructions for them to burn out.
Stuxnet didn’t simply take over a computer or steal information, it actually caused the
equipment to self-destruct!
It’s more dangerous than a computer virus.
While a virus is dormant until the unwitting victim installs it, a worm can spread without
being activated.
Stuxnet is believed to have been created by the U.S. National Security Agency and Israeli
intelligence though neither has ever admitted responsibility.
Their collaborative effort was dubbed “Operation Olympic Games”
It started under the Bush administration.
President Obama sped it up when he came into office in 2009, heeding Bush’s advice to
continue the cyberattacks.
President Bush believed it was the only way to prevent Israel from launching a conventional
strike on Iranian nuclear facilities - like the one that targeted a Syrian nuclear reactor
in 2007.
Israel has never bought Iran’s argument that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful,
for the purposes of generating electricity, for example.
Iran launched its nuclear program in the 1950s with the help of the U.S. through the Atoms
for Peace program in which America shared resources with countries wanting to develop
atomic energy for peaceful activities.
In 1970, Iran ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to limit its program for peaceful
use.
It meant Iran would have to be subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA).
Those inspectors with the IAEA noticed centrifuges mysteriously failing at the start of 2010.
Getting the worm into the Natanz facility was actually the final step of a carefully
planned attack.
This is what is believed to have happened.
The NSA and the Israeli military wrote a program that digitally mapped out the workings of
Iran’s Natanz plant.
The program is introduced into a controller computer at the plant possibly by an oblivious
plant worker.
The program collects information on how the computers in the facility are configured
The agencies use the data to design a complex worm - Stuxnet.
Stuxnet is introduced into the plant’s computer controllers via a USB stick.
Stuxnet was designed to target computers with a specific Siemens (see-mins) software program.
This program was used by industrial computers to control and monitor the centrifuges.
The worm takes over control of the centrifuges, causing them to spin too fast or too slow.
They become unbalanced and in some cases, explode.
Centrifuges spin at supersonic speeds to separate isotopes in uranium gas.
Uranium enriched to 90% or more can be used to make nuclear weapons.
According to the New York Times, the centrifuges first began to crash in 2008.
Initially, the attacks were small and seemed like random accidents as variations in the
code prompted different types of breakdowns which confused the Iranian engineers.
By the spring of 2010, the NSA and Israel’s Secretive Intelligence Unit 8200 prepared
to ramp up their attack to target 1,000 centrifuges.
But the worm was discovered.
That summer, a programming error sent the worm onto the laptop of an Iranian engineer.
The laptop had reportedly been hooked up to the systems controlling the centrifuges.
The Stuxnet worm was replicated across the internet, spreading wildly and attacking computers
in India, Indonesia, and China.
It’s eventually tracked down and disassembled by security researchers.
President Obama decided to continue the operation anyway, and Stuxnet took out nearly 1,000
centrifuges - or about a fifth of those operating.
There’s been debate about how the worm actually got into the nuclear facility.
According to one theory, Israel hired an Iranian double agent or agents to infect the facility
with a corrupt memory stick.
Another theory, according to security software firm Symantec is that the attackers infected
computers at five outside companies connected to the nuclear program, and somehow, managed
to find its way to Natanz.
Experts who analyzed the computer worm say it was far more complex - and brilliant - than
anything they had ever seen.
The attackers even secretly recorded what a normal day at the plant looked like and
then played those readings back to plant operators so they didn’t think anything was wrong
as the centrifuges were tearing themselves apart.
Kind of like a pre-recorded security tape during a bank heist in movies, like Ocean’s
11.
The U.S. believes the attack set back Iran’s nuclear program by up to 2 years.
Others believe this is an overestimation.
Iran denied that its well-known struggles to enrich uranium were caused by Stuxnet.
The country had always insisted its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes.
That is until a former head of Iran’s nuclear agency let slip in 2021 that Iran’s growth
involved “satellites, missiles, and nuclear weapons".
Fereydoun Abbas-Davani spoke to state media on the anniversary of the assassination of
Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh by the Israeli government.
Currently, the Biden administration is trying to revive a 2015 agreement that curbs Iran’s
nuclear work in return for relief from sanctions.
It would see Iranian oil come back on the market at a time when the U.S. has banned
Russian oil.
President Trump had exited the nuclear deal.
Critics worry that Iran could develop nukes under the guise of working toward peaceful
ends.
The Stuxnet computer worm has vast repercussions today.
Computer security experts have described Stuxnet as an instruction manual of sorts.
Sean McGurk, a former cybersecurity official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
noted that the Stuxnet source code could be downloaded, modified, and directed at new
targets.
During an interview with 60 Minutes, he said this in reference to those who created the
sophisticated cyberweapon:
"They opened the box.
They demonstrated the capability...it's not something that can be put back."
In 2012, Iranian hackers are believed to have unleashed a virus against the Saudi Arabian
petroleum and natural gas company Saudi Aramco.
They stole passwords, destroyed data, and prevented rebooting on tens of thousands of
computers.
A document leaked by Edward Snowden and provided to The Intercept showed the NSA believed Iran
had “demonstrated a clear ability to learn from the capabilities and actions of others.”
Strengthening the fears of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran had learned from American
cyberattacks.
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