stuxnet

Obama takes cyberwarfare to new level, report says

President Barack Obama has been fighting a clandestine cyberwar against foreign governments and al-Qaeda, and his efforts in that arena have far exceeded those of his predecessors, according to a new report.

The New York Times today published a wide-ranging report, adapted from an upcoming book, "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," by Times reporter David Sanger, on the Obama administration's use of cyberwarfare to take on Iran and potentially other countries or entities it views as a threat. Chief among the administration's targets was Iran's nuclear plants, … Read more

Meet the little box that could stop Flame and Stuxnet

Let me introduce you to Norm.

"Norm!"

No, not George Wendt. Norman is an IT security company based in Norway that's selling a box that just might save the world from the next nuclear disaster.

Perhaps you've heard of a beefy piece of malware dubbed "Flame" that's been getting some attention lately. This week it became the latest dark monarch to reign in the underworld kingdom of scary code. Norm -- sorry, Norman -- says its new box could douse Flame and stop destructive cousins like Stuxnet and Duqu in their tracks, too.… Read more

Stuxnet delivered to Iranian nuclear plant on thumb drive

An Iranian double agent working for Israel used a standard thumb drive carrying a deadly payload to infect Iran's Natanz nuclear facility with the highly destructive Stuxnet computer worm, according to a story by ISSSource.

Stuxnet quickly propagated throughout Natanz -- knocking that facility offline and at least temporarily crippling Iran's nuclear program -- once a user did nothing more than click on a Windows icon. The worm was discovered nearly two years ago.

ISSSource's report yesterday was based on sources inside the U.S. intelligence community.

These sources, who requested anonymity because of their close proximity … Read more

'60 Minutes' profiles threat posed by Stuxnet

Stuxnet took the world by storm two years ago.

The worm was different from previous viruses: it wasn't designed to steal money, identities, or passwords. Instead, the malware targeted the controls at industrial facilities such as power plants, inspiring talk of a top secret, government-sponsored cyberwar.

At the time of its discovery in June 2010, the assumption was that espionage lay behind the effort, but subsequent analysis uncovered the ability of the malware to control plant operations outright--specifically an Iranian nuclear facility.

In addition to showing that a cyberattack could cause significant physical damage to a facility, it also … Read more

Ex-CIA chief: Stuxnet a good idea

Former CIA chief Gen. Mike Hayden says the Stuxnet virus that sabotaged the Iranian nuclear program was a "good idea."

"This was a good idea, all right? But I also admit this was a big idea too," Hayden said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday night on the CBS program "60 Minutes." "The rest of the world is looking at this and saying, 'Clearly, someone has legitimated this kind of activity as acceptable.'"

The computer worm was fingered as a culprit in the mass failure of centrifuges at Iran's nuclear … Read more

Spam sinks to lowest level in almost three years, says Symantec

Think you're seeing less junk mail in your inbox these days? If so, it's not just your imagination.

The rate of spam across the world has hit close to a three-year low and now encompasses just 70 percent of all e-mails, according to Symantec's November Intelligence Report (PDF).

That number is a healthy drop from 2009 when spam accounted for 90 percent of all global e-mails. And it's close to the 68 percent level seen in late 2008 after the spam hosting ISP McColo was shut down.

In particular, pharmaceutical spam is at its lowest level … Read more

Zero-day Windows kernel bug used in Duqu infections

Researchers have figured out one way the Stuxnet-like Duqu Trojan is infecting computers--via a Word document that exploits a previously unknown Windows kernel bug.

The installer file is a Microsoft Word document that exploits the kernel vulnerabilty, which allows code to be executed on the infected system, Symantec said in a post on its site. There may be other infection methods used by other Duqu variants that have not been uncovered yet, Kevin Haley, a director with Symantec Security Response, told CNET.

Microsoft is working on a fix, according to Jerry Bryant, group manager for response communications at Microsoft Trustworthy … Read more

New data-stealing Trojan could be Stuxnet version 2.0

Malware has been discovered on computer systems in Europe that has identical code to the Stuxnet worm and could be the precursor to the next big computer attack on critical infrastructure systems, Symantec said today.

Unlike Stuxnet, which targeted specific Siemens SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) software and appeared to have been written to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the new malware installs a backdoor and is designed to gather information, like design documents, that could be used in future attacks, Symantec said.

The malware, written to run on Windows systems, is dubbed Duqu because it creates file names … Read more

Viruses: Destroying your systems for 25 years

LAS VEGAS--The hacker conference DefCon kicked off this morning with the rare public sighting of a now-archaic piece of technology: the 5 1/4-inch floppy disk. Mikko Hypponen, the chief technical officer for the Finnish security company F-Secure, waved the disk above his head to start off his history of PC viruses, and said, "This is Brain."

Hypponen was talking about a guest of honor housed on the disk: the original computer virus. Hypponen found the disk last year in a lockbox in F-Secure's headquarters in Helsinki, and he dove in, cracked the virus code, and found … Read more