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Iranian nuclear program hit by virus, plays AC/DC

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Is a Computer Worm Causing Iranian Nuclear Facilities to Blast AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ At Night?

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Heavy metal has been weaponzied. At least that's the claim by a computer security researcher who says an Iranian nuclear scientist emailed him to say he and his fellow scientists were under attack by involuntary blasts of AC/DC, sparked by computer malware.

Mikko Hypponen, lead researcher at the Finnish computer security firm F-Secure, says he received "a series of emails from Iran" this weekend about a new rockin' cyber attack on nuclear research facilities there. He posted the text of one email to his blog:

I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility Fordo near Qom.

According to the email our cyber experts sent to our teams, they believe a hacker tool Metasploit was used. The hackers had access to our VPN. The automation network and Siemens hardware were attacked and shut down. I only know very little about these cyber issues as I am scientist not a computer expert.

There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC.

This seems like some variant of a Nigerian scam email, but Hypponen says he's verified it really was sent from Iran's Atomic Energy Organization. And Hypponen, a legendary computer virus hunter, has received emails like this from Iranian authorities in the past. Last month he wrote in Wired about how an Iranian computer security analyst had emailed him to notify him about the Flame spyware that was infecting Iranian computers. Flame was developed by the U.S. and Israel to spy on Iranian computer networks in advance of future cyber warfare campaigns, according to the Washington Post.

But the program mentioned in the email, Metasploit, is an open-source project used to find vulnerabilities in software. Unlike Flame or its famous cousin Stuxnet, which has been estimated to have cost $3 million to develop, Metasploit can cost as little as $3,000.

This seems as likely to be a bit of weird disinformation by whomever sent the email, as a legitimate attack. Because if anything, AC/DC would shock those scientists into hyper-productivity. They'd be jumping over centrifuges with their shirts off: AHhhhhhhhAAAAAAAaaa. THUNDER!

Is a Computer Worm Causing Iranian Nuclear Facilities to Blast AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck' At Night?



LOL

 
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Or perhaps a young researcher with good taste in music is caught listening to his rock collection and his excuse was,
but but its a virus ;)
 
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This is getting worrisome now. Israelis have one of the best hackers in the world and when they couldn't stop them physically, they are trying to slow their nuclear development down using such attacks.
 
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It's OK. This kind of sh!t is bound to happen. We're not omnipotent or omnipresent. But two can play at this game! In a way I'm happy this is happening now. It's gonna force the people in charge to review their cyber defence strategy and tighten the screws. Hopefully they'll dump all the crappy windows copies on government computers and adopt the native Persian Sharif Linux distribution.
 
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The email looks to be a joke ;)

It has to be, ok write a virus to disrupt a program or steal information i cant imagine but who on earth would write a virus to hack a secure system just to play Angus at loud volume at random hours of the night?
Besides if your going to spoof a nuclear power plant with an AC/DC song you would have to go with T.N.T.
 
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If this is true it was a massive waste of an opportunity to play a stupid song, rather than do some serious damage without being noticed.
 
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Israelis have one of the best hackers in the world

we must respond them by the same thing ! not only we have good hackers in Iran but also we have some of the best computer programmers and hackers from Russia and China that collaborate with IRAN Cyber Army.
 
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