Posted on 12/27/2010 8:47:10 AM PST by shield
I recently wrote a white paper entitled “Dragons, Tigers, Pearls, and Yellowcake” in which I proposed four alternative scenarios for the Stuxnet worm other than the commonly held assumption that it was Israel or the U.S. targeting Iran’s Bushehr or Natanz facilities. During the course of my research for that paper, I uncovered a connection between two of the key players in the Stuxnet drama: Vacon, the Finnish manufacturer of one of two frequency converter drives targeted by this malware; and RealTek, who’s digital certificate was stolen and used to smooth the way for the worm to be loaded onto a Windows host without raising any alarms. A third important piece of the puzzle, which I’ll discuss later in this article, directly connects a Chinese antivirus company which writes their own viruses with the Stuxnet worm.
Most people who have followed the Stuxnet investigation know that the international headquarters for Vacon is in Finland, but surprisingly, Finland isn’t where Vacon’s frequency converter drives are manufactured. Vacon’s manufacturing plant is actually located in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) under the name Vacon Suzhou Drives Co. Ltd., located at 11A, Suchun Industrial Square 428# Xinglong Street, SIP Suzhou 215126 China.
Vacon isn’t the only company involved with Stuxnet that has a Chinese connection. The first genuine digital certificate used by Stuxnet developers was from RealTek Semiconductor Corp., a Taiwanese company which has a subsidiary in (of all places) Suzhou under the name Realsil Microelectronics, Inc. (450 Shenhu Road, Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou 215021 Jiangsu Province, China).
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
He doesn’t mention the assassination of the “de-wormer”(my term) nuclear scientist.
This is fascinating, though a bit of a disappointment if true. I was kind of hoping that we Americans had done something clever in association with our brave Israeli allies.
The “inscrutable Chinese” are a stereotype, but if this piece is true, you can’t get much more inscrutable than that....
It's terrifying if true. How much of our IT infrastructure is made in the PRC?
Naturally, I just had to glance down at the RealTek audio control software loaded on this powerful, but nevertheless budget-borne new PC, and sighed.
The Israeli State is a great ally...however, they have stolen our secrets and have sold them to China...this is known throughout the intelligence arm of the USA.
Yeah this fawning over Israel here gets tedious. I support Bibi and Israel but the fandom gets tiring especially people jumping to the conclusion that Stuxnet was Israel work with no evidence. It could have been but we will never know who really did it.
The Finns are among the smartest people in the world and among the best programmers. I would bet some American programmers are involved too. Good American programmers are usually very good. I know a few.
The Chinese are very smart but not as creative when it comes to programming but they could have pulled it off.
Taiwanese? Hmm.....very good allies to America. It could have been Chi Coms, Taiwanese, Finns or anybody. I wonder if the Finns could have hid it in the hardware.
Whomever did this did not want the Iranians to know who it was.
The Pentagon is subject to astronomical numbers of attacks every day on its computers. By far the greatest number of them, and the most sophisticated, are from the Chicoms. The DOD’s Cyber Defense Team is staffed by amazingly brilliant 25 year-old whiz kids who get burned and bummed out playing nothing but defense. They quit and newbies hired because they can’t stand just protecting their goal line and never being allowed to play offense.
“You have no idea what we could do to Chinese military computer systems if my guys were greenlighted to take them down,” the leader of one of the cyber teams told me. “We’d teach the Chicoms to never dick with us ever again. We could take down practically the entire Chinese economy if we wanted to. My guys are light years better than theirs - but our hands our tied behind our backs.”
So expect a delegation of majority members of the House Armed Forces Committee to pay a visit to the Pentagon early next year and start untying those hands. The message will be: The Chinese must be taught a series of very instructive lessons that cyber-war with the US is a game they will seriously lose.
Sounds like it's time for some free agents if you ask me.
ping
ya gotta be kiddin me... damn
Thanks shield.
whaat? Clinton suddenly needed a middle man?
Vacon, the Finnish manufacturer of one of two frequency converter drives targeted by this malware; and RealTek, [whose] digital certificate was stolen and used to smooth the way for the worm to be loaded onto a Windows host without raising any alarms. A third important piece of the puzzle, which I'll discuss later in this article, directly connects a Chinese antivirus company which writes their own viruses with the Stuxnet worm.Already pinged it once, this is just an important one to re-read (I had forgotten all about it). Thanks shield.
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