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Did Stuxnet Infect A Russian Nuclear Plant?
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Kaspersky has claimed that the infamous Stuxnet computer worm “badly infected” the internal network of an unnamed Russian nuclear plant after it caused chaos in Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Speaking at a keynote presentation given at the Canberra Press Club 2013, Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said a staffer at the unnamed nuclear plant informed him of the infection.
“[The staffer said] their nuclear plant network which was disconnected from the internet was badly infected by Stuxnet,” Kaspersky said.
“So unfortunately these people who were responsible for offensive technologies, they recognise cyber weapons as an opportunity.”
Stuxnet was discovered to have spread throughout industrial software and equipment in 2010 and is believed to have been created by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to Kaspersky’s source, the malware was carried into the Russian nuclear plant and installed on a physically separated “air-gapped” network.
Kaspersky also made a rather outlandish joke during his speech, saying that all data is subject to theft. “All the data is stolen,” Kaspersky said. “At least twice.”
“If the claim of the Russian nuclear plant infection is true, then it’s easy to imagine how this “collateral damage” could have turned into a very serious incident indeed, with obvious diplomatic repercussions,” said security expert Graham Cluley.
“There is no way to independently verify the claim, of course. But it is a fact that Stuxnet managed to infect many computer systems outside of its intended target in Iran,” Cluley added. “Indeed, the very fact that it spread out of control, was what lead to its discovery by security firms.”
Earlier this year, Symantec claimed that the Stuxnet computer worm could date back further than 2010 and was more widespread than originally believed.
Symantec’s report called “The Missing Link” found a build of the Stuxnet attack tool, dubbed Stuxnet 0.5, which it said dated back to 2005 and used different techniques to sabotage industrial facilities.
Google Expands Malware Blocker
Google has expanded malware blocking in an early development build of Chrome to sniff out a wider range of threats than the browser already recognizes.
Chrome’s current “Canary” build — the label for very-early versions of the browser, earlier than even Chrome’s Dev channel — will post a warning at the bottom of the window when it detects an attempted download of malicious code.
Features added to the Canary build usually, although not always, eventually make it into the Dev channel — the roughest-edged of the three distributed to users — and from there into the Beta and Stable channels. Google did not spell out a timetable for the expanded malware blocking.
Chrome has included malware blocking for more than two years, since version 12 launched in June 2011, and the functionality was extended in February 2012with Chrome 17.
Chrome is now at version 30.
Canary’s blocking, however, is more aggressive on two fronts: It is more assertive in its alerts and detects more malware forms, including threats that pose as legitimate software and monkey with the browser’s settings.
“Content.exe is malicious, and Chrome has blocked it,” the message in Canary reads. The sole visible option is to click the “Dismiss” button, which makes the warning vanish. The only additional option, and that only after another click, is to “Learn more,” which leads to yet another warning.
In Canary, there is no way for the user to contradict the malware blocking.
That’s different than in the current Stable build of Chrome, which relies on a message that says, “This file is malicious. Are you sure you want to continue?” and gives the user a choice between tossing the downloaded file or saving it anyway.
As it has for some time, Chrome will show such warnings on select file extensions, primarily “.exe,” which in Windows denotes an executable file, and “.msi,” an installation package for Windows applications. Canary’s expansion, said Google, also warns when the user tries to download some less obvious threats, including payloads masquerading as legitimate software — it cited screen savers and video plug-ins in a blog posting — that hijack browser settings to silently change the home page or insert ads into websites to monetize the malware.
Google’s malware blocking is part of its Safe Browsing API (application programming interface) and service, which Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox all access to warn customers of potentially dangerous websites before they reach them.
In Chrome’s case, the malware warning stems not only from the Safe Browsing “blacklist” of dodgy websites, but according to NSS Labs, a security software testing company, also from the Content Agnostic Malware Protection (CAMP) technology that Google has baked into its implementation of Safe Browsing.
Collaborating Viruses Showing Up
Two computer viruses are collaborating to defeat clean-up operations. Microsoft researcher Hyun Choi has found that the pair of viruses foil removal by regularly downloading updated versions of their malware partner.
It is the first time that such a defense plan has been noticed before. Choi said that the Vobfus and Beebone viruses, were regularly found together. Vobfus was the first to arrive on a machine, he said, and used different tactics to infect victims. Vobfus could be installed via booby-trapped links on websites, travel via network links to other machines or lurk on USB drives and infect machines they are plugged into.
Once installed, Vobfus downloaded Beebone which enrolled the machine into a botnet. After this the two start to work together to regularly download new versions of each other. If Vobfus was detected and remediated, it could have downloaded an undetected Beebone which can in turn download an undetected variant of Vobfus.
Vobfus become a persistent problem since 2009 when it first appeared.
Google SEARCH Goes SSL
Google is finally taking privacy seriously to a degree by offering its users a secure form of searching while using Google Search. Moving forward users will have the opportunity to enable SSL (Secure Socket Layer) for added security. Be advised, the service will only cover the Google search and clicks made through Google to other non-secured sites will be visible.