Self-Reliance

One of the coolest things about being a professor is when, out of nowhere, a bunch of separate pieces all of a sudden come together in an unexpected way. Case in point:

My capstone information systems class is in the midst of a module on cybersecurity. Part of this is a couple of lectures on SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems. SCADAs are industrial control systems that monitor and control automated and distributed equipment (e.g., generators, motors, pumps, valves) used in power generation, pipelines, water and sewage systems, and so forth.

In order to make the lectures more interesting, I use the example of the Stuxnet worm that infected the Iranian nuclear program, setting it back for years.

The original Stuxnet malware was the culmination of a vast technical and espionage effort that had only one target in mind: the Iranian nuclear program. And is widely believed to be the work of the United States and Israel. Experts who looked at the program were amazed at its ability to penetrate Iran’s secure, highly protected security system and destroy it without being detected.

Here's the cool part - actually, parts.

As I was updating my notes for today's lecture I came across a recent story about a new infection.

Iranian officials admitted Sunday that they had uncovered evidence of the Duqu computer virus -- labeled "Son of Stuxnet" by cyber experts -- at the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites, state-controlled IRNA news agency reported.

Duqu is the second major weaponized virus to turn computers into lethal weapons with devastating destructive power.

That may not sound too exciting to most folks, but to people in my field it's like a sequel to a hit movie. As I dug into it a little more I found some related material that makes the story really intriguing - a parallel series of assassinations executed (sorry...) against Iranian nuclear scientists apparently in conjunction with the release of the viruses.

Nov. 2010:

An Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed and another wounded in two separate but similar attacks in the capital, Tehran.

The scientists were targeted by men on motorbikes who attached bombs to the windows of their cars as they drove to work, officials said.

Another scientist was killed in a bomb blast at the beginning of the year.

Nov. 2011:

Iran today buries a senior commander of its missile force, amid claims that the huge explosion that killed him and at least 16 others at a Revolutionary Guard base on Saturday was the work of Israeli agents.

The blast Saturday, 30 miles west of Tehran, was so large it could be heard and felt in the capital.

Sounds like something out of a James Bond film, doesn't it.

But wait! There's more!

I took a closer look at the viruses and found a couple of Easter Eggs. (I didn't actually find them. People far smarter than me, in deconstructing the virus used in the first cyber attack against the Iranian nuclear facility, found them. I just found the published results of that deconstruction.)

• The Stuxnet virus will not infect a system that contains the code "19790509".

On May 9, 1979 (1979-05-09) a man named Habib Elghanian was executed by the Iranians. Elghanian was a leader of Iran's Jewish community. He was one of the first victims of the 1979 Iranian revolution, which brought the fundamentalist Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Khomeini, of course, went on to orchestrate the kidnapping of American hostages that helped lead to the defeat of Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan.

• There is a software path in the Stuxnet virus that reads, in part, "...\myrtus\src\objfire_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb"

Myrtus is the scientific name for myrtle, a family of flowering plants. Guava is a plant in the myrtle family, The Hebrew word for "myrtle" is "Hadassah." "Hadassah" is the birthname of Esther, a Jewish queen who ruled in ancient Persia - now Iran - and subject of the Book of Esther, one of the books in the Hebrew Bible.

Call Spielberg. Call Ron Howard. This would make a terrific movie.

The Israelis are doing everything they can, short of direct military action, to dismantle the Iranian nuclear program. And they're doing it with flair and panache. Good thing, too, because if they waited for help from the current weasel-in-chief occupying the White House they'd soon be nothing but ashes glowing in the dark.