Cybercrime and the Darknet: Revealing the hidden underworld of the internet by Cath Senker

Author:Cath Senker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing Limited

Cybersabotage

Frequently a long-term project, cybersabotage often covertly damages systems for several years before security researchers notice it. It may have a temporary effect on computer systems, as in the case of Shamoon (a virus discovered in 2012), or cause physical damage, as Stuxnet did. As for espionage, effective sabotage requires insider knowledge to understand how to compromise systems and sometimes human participation as well.

Stuxnet

At the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran in 2011, the accusations began to fly. A few of the machines were failing and no one knew why. The engineers began to blame each other, certain that they themselves had done nothing wrong. It was worrying and potentially dangerous. Should they shut the whole system down until they could uncover the problem? As it was later described in the New York Times, ‘The intent was that the failures should make them feel they were stupid.’ 182 Eventually, the engineers realized the plant was being sabotaged remotely. 183 How long had this being going on? And more importantly, who were these cyber criminals?

The full story did not emerge until 2012. The United States and Israel had designed a sophisticated cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme at Natanz. Starting in 2005, the covert attack, code-named Olympic Games, aimed to undermine Iran’s confidence in its ability to develop nuclear weapons. 184 The sabotage software used a worm written specially to attack an industrial control system that was not on the Internet. The challenge for the saboteurs was to get it across the ‘air gap’ that protected it from the outside world to its target. Siemens engineers were helping the Iranians; someone may have carried in Stuxnet on a thumb drive – either willingly or not. All the worm’s functions were in the hardware that was smuggled in. 185

The worm aimed to physically damage rotors, turbines and centrifuges. But it worked stealthily, so the operators wouldn’t realize. Evading anti-virus software, it provided fake readings from the system while it changed the controller code in the background. The attack required a large team of people, huge resources, expensive equipment and a lot of time. Stuxnet did not stop the Iranian nuclear programme but it certainly delayed it; according to a US study, it was set back by one to two years. 186

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