Tag Archives: China

[WTF] Did Stuxnet Sabotage Iran’s Nuclear Facilities?

Newspapers are full of speculations and details about this unique piece of software code, that obviously is a work by a government.Stuxnet used 4-zero-day exploits to infect computer networks running with Microsoft Windows. It was compatible to Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The Register writes:

(..) the Stuxnet worm was programmed to probe the hosts it infected for extremely specific settings. Unless it identified the hardware fingerprint it was looking for in industrial software systems made by Siemens, it remained largely dormant.

Experts say the quality of code is very sophisticated, there are nearly no side effects. It is estimated that the costs of the development of a virus of that quality goes into the millions of dollars. It also shows a very detailed knowledge of the attacked facilities.

There are some indications that Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz were the target of that virus.

The downside is we suspect this is the beginning of large scale cyber attacks. I don’t think that western Nulear Facilities are safe from such attacks. Let’s all hope the best. This virus is simply a nightmare.

Links

Update

A short overview on the articles published show, that almost all of them cite german security specialists Frank Rieger (member of Chaos Computer Club) or Ralph Langner (Founder of Langner.com).

[News] iTunes Gift Card Algorithm Cracked

On auction sites worldwide chinese faked iTunes gift card serials are getting sold for a lot less money than their iTunes value. Currently 200US$ gift cards cost about 3-5US$ in China. In Europe prices vary between 40-60€ per 200US$ gift card.

This issue reveals that Apple seems to have at least one problem: either they don’t have a database of valid gift card keys at all, but is only using checksum algorithms to test for validity of these cards – or their database of valid gift cards has backdoors that have been found by some chinese guys. Although – as always – Apple did not comment on this yet, they are most likely working on this problem.

We strongly recommend to not buy iTunes gift cards currently via auction sites. It is fraud and by knowingly buying those faked codes you are accountable. Moreover technically will Apple block these codes.

Always remember: if it’s too cheap to be true, it is fake.