Stuxnet and Nuclear War

The conspiracy machine began quietly producing theories surrounding the Japan earthquake/tsunami and subsequent nuclear plant crisis mere days after it happened. Alex Jones and his HAARPies led the charge, claiming the earthquake was deliberately caused through the use of HAARP’s weather modification technology.

I’d like to focus on a lesser-known part of the theory, one that claims a computer virus called Stuxnet caused the security failures and radiation leaks in Japan’s nuclear power plants.

The worm was discovered in 2010 in Iran and quickly spread to Indonesia, India and the United States. Described as one of the “most refined pieces of malware ever discovered”, Stuxnet infected Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant and caused operational capacity to fall 30% at a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. In June, Wikileaks released papers linking an accident at Natanz to the Stuxnet infection.

Stuxnet was designed to target Siemens Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems which are used by industrial factories to monitor and control industrial processes. Most nuclear facilities utilize these to control centrifuges and cooling systems. If the systems malfunction or stop working, which is the Stuxnet worm’s intent, it could result in a heightened release of radiation. Some experts speculate that the worm originated in Israel, possibly developed by the Israeli Intelligence Corps’s Unit 8200.

The worm has since spread to many countries and in the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan, some theorists are linking the worm to the shutdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant’s coolant reactors.

Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst and founder of IT-Harvest, addressed the Japan/Stuxnet theory:

It is not hard to extrapolate that designer-malware could target these systems with the intent to shut them down and cause at the very least the emergency shut down of a nuclear power plant, at the worst, release of a radioactive plume and the permanent disabling of the reactor - as has happened in Japan.

There is no evidence that the reactor monitoring systems received any damage other than destruction caused by the earthquake. It’s unclear how much power, if any, the plant’s computer system has now. There’s no way to know if the planet’s computers were online long enough to allow the computer worm in. Some speculate the worm was already in the nuclear plant’s system, waiting for a moment of vulnerability to make its attack. I suppose it depends on how “intelligent” you’d like to think Stuxnet is.

I think it’s quite a leap to say this computer worm caused the entire nuclear crisis occurring in Japan, though the theorists make a decent case. Cyberwarfare is a looming possibility, and there areagencies capable of designing malware that can cause physical damage to nuclear facilities.

Stiennon added this warning to his statement:

While most nuclear power plants are not on faults (with the notable exception of Diablo Canyon in California) they are all subject to mechanical failures induced by malware introduced to their networks. Redundancy and fail safe measures cannot rely on power, computers, or networks.