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Stuxnet Worm Targets Automated Systems for Frequency Converters: Are Iranian Centrifuges the Target?
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On Friday, November 12, 2010, the Symantec Corporation posted an update of its analysis of the Stuxnet worm and narrowed the target to automated systems that control frequency converters manufactured by two firms: Fararo Paya in Tehran, Iran, and Vacon in Finland. It concludes that frequency converters in Iran’s gas centrifuge plants could be the target of Stuxnet.
The information, on its own, is not yet sufficient to determine if Stuxnet is indeed aimed at Iranian centrifuge plants. Frequency converters of the type identified as Stuxnet’s target have many other uses than centrifuge plants. For example, they are used to drive turbomolecular vacuum pumps, which are not typically used in centrifuges plants but have wide application in high-technology industries.
Moreover, it is unknown if Fararo Paya provides frequency converters to the Iranian enrichment program.
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Stuxnet’s Finnish-Chinese Connection
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The closest that anyone has come to identifying compromised operations is at Natanz however their centrifuge failures go back several years according to this February, 2010 report by ISIS, while the earliest Stuxnet sample seen by Symantec’s researchers was June, 2009 and that’s before it had signed driver files or exploited the remote code execution vulnerability that appeared in January, 2010 and March, 2010 respectively.
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Did Stuxnet Take Out 1,000 Centrifuges at the Natanz Enrichment Plant?