- 【Preface】
In the science fiction novel "Three-Body Problem", it has been described that aliens blocked the development of human science, the Trisolaran people covered the entire earth with simple "wisdom children", and any technological progress of human beings was monitored by them, in order to curb the development of human science, which made readers shudder.
Readers can't help but think, if one day, in real life, there is really a technology that blocks technology, then the future of the country is not very hopeful? And such a desperate thing really happened in Iran in 2010.
Iran suffered the world's first "cyber war" that year. Iran's nuclear research center was hit by an Israeli computer virus that destroyed 1,000 centrifuges that raised uranium concentrations, so much so that 12 years later, Iran's nuclear strategic research is still stalling.
Blockade technology is tantamount to depriving a country of its job, so in 2015, Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei made a speech claiming that Iran would be a "feud" between the United States and Israel, and that their feud would never end.
What's going on? Why does Iran hate Israel to the bone? What kind of computer virus is enough to destroy the development of a country's nuclear industry? Why do computer viruses rise to the level of physical destruction?
To answer these questions, we need to push back 12 years.
- 【Unrealized Crisis】
In 2010, a civilian hacking organization in the United States found a seemingly non-toxic and harmless computer software on the dark web, and when the hackers split the code of the software, they found that it was a virus program. The virus design is very secretive, after entering the computer will not occur immediately, but will retrieve the software in the computer, once there is an industrial operating system that controls large machines, the virus will surface and play a role.
Hackers quickly released the computer virus at the World Cyber Security Forum, hoping that everyone can unlock the secrets of the virus.
For a time, forum experts gathered on this post. One of the software engineers, through reverse development, retrieved the location of the computer that owned the virus and found that the IP addresses of the vast majority of computers were in Iran.
For a time, what was originally a technical post evolved into a discussion area of public opinion, netizens had to associate the "2010 Iranian nuclear industry base was inexplicably broken" with computer viruses, and could not help but lament that computer viruses have such a powerful destructive force.
So technicians named the virus Stuxnet.
After the virus was exposed on the Internet, it quickly received attention from the Iranian government. Dramatically, if no netizens found the computer virus, Iran has not yet realized that its country's nuclear industry facilities have been infiltrated by Israeli cyber forces.
Why and why does Israel want to undermine the development of Iran's nuclear industry in this way? Is there American support behind it?
In fact, the Stuxnet virus was indeed implanted in Israel, and their purpose was also to hinder the development of Iran's nuclear industry.
The Stuxnet virus infects industrial facilities
In 2008, Iran, one of the most militarily powerful countries in the Middle East, conducted its own strategic nuclear weapons research, and the Iranian government procured more than 9,000 centrifuges from Pakistan to increase uranium concentrations, with the goal of strategic nuclear weapons.
We all know that nuclear weapons can keep one side safe. Iran naturally understood this truth, and the then supreme leader of Iran said that if Iran had nuclear weapons, the entire Middle East would be peaceful and Israel would cease to exist.
As for the contradictions between Iran and Israel, I will not dwell on them here. In a word, because of multiple factors such as religion and the United States, Israel is a thorn in the side of all Arab countries.
Iran placed the centrifuges in Natanz, a small town not far from the capital Tehran, where it built 20 and did a nuclear industrial base.
Natanz Nuclear Industrial Base
The iranian research on nuclear weapons was highly publicized by the government, which soon attracted the attention of Israel, which absolutely did not allow Iran to have its own nuclear weapons out of national and religious interests. In terms of international developments, the interests of the United States and Israel are aligned, so the United States has also joined the ranks of hindering Iran's development.
Initially, Israel intended to bomb the Natanz area with aircraft. But the plan was quickly rejected by the Israeli military, because Israel and Iran are separated by Iraq and Jordan, and such a blatant air strike is difficult not to be detected by Iranian defense, perhaps before the plane flew into Iranian airspace, it was shot down.
Is there no other way? Israel's top brass discussed.
Finally, they set their sights on the Internet, which could disrupt and research systems at the lowest cost if the internal network of Iran's nuclear industrial base were destroyed from within.
However, even if Iran's cyber information security management lags behind, it knows that the computers in the nuclear industry base are not networked.
Now there are two issues before Israel:
One is how computer viruses achieve physical destruction;
The second is how to send the virus to Iran.
In this regard, the US technical department and the Israeli intelligence organization Mossad have something to say.
U.S. Cyber Warfare Center
- 【Top Secret Invasion】
In 2008, a video circulated in the United States and the Internet, where a hacker remotely changed the diesel engine power of a car through a virus, causing the diesel engine to burst instantaneously and the car to be damaged at the same time.
This means that the United States has mastered the technology to destroy machinery with viruses. As long as the machine has an integrated circuit chip, this operation can be achieved. Solving the technical problems, Israel began to work on the virus invasion. The only way to transmit the virus to a computer at a base in Iran's nuclear industry is through a "hard-core implant" on a USB stick.
Implanting a virus with a USB stick sounds absurd, and in our imagination, hacking is a decisive victory thousands of miles away, and it can be achieved without leaving home. However, in the field of network information security, U disk implantation virus is a big science, called "social engineering".
The so-called social engineering is to transmit the media that the Internet cannot reach through the social relations created by human beings. In those days, USB flash drives were the dominant medium for internal data transmission, so it was possible to achieve as long as viruses were implanted on the USB sticks of researchers in Iran's nuclear industry.
In this regard, the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, is an expert. The Mossad headquarters used social media to lock down an engineer at iran's nuclear industry research institute, who often posts on social media about his comfortable life on weekend fishing breaks.
Mossad suggested starting with the engineer's fishing hobby, sending an agent to Iran, disguised as a fishing enthusiast, to approach the engineer on weekends. Over the course of several weeks of fishing, Iranian engineers quickly became friends with agents and fished together more and more.
During a fishing trip, the agent took advantage of the engineer's lack of attention and swapped the USB stick on the engineer's car. This USB stick looks no different from the original in appearance, and the data inside has also been copied, except for an additional "Stuxnet" virus program.
One day in 2010, as usual, engineers inserted USB flash drives into computers at nuclear industrial bases. However, this insertion caused the entire Natanz nuclear industry base to be infected with the Stuxnet virus on the computers.
Although the virus has been successfully implanted, it has made it difficult for Israel because they do not understand the product models of the industrial facilities in the Iranian nuclear industry base and cannot make adjustments.
That's when a piece of news broke the deadlock.
Iran's official television broadcast a news item recording the Iranian leader's visit to the Natanz nuclear industrial base, in just 2 seconds of video content, the base's industrial facilities style and model are all exposed, and the media has not been processed, what operating system on the computer screen, the degree of use of the facility, various operating data at a glance.
The Israeli military only needs a pause button to learn all the equipment data from the Natanz nuclear industrial base.
Everything is ready, only the east wind is owed. The Stuxnet virus is finally working...
- 【Silent Destruction】
The principle of computer viruses is to interfere with the system through "zero-day vulnerabilities". The so-called zero-day vulnerability is a vulnerability that has not been discovered by the developer of the computer operating system and the state information security department, and the vulnerability will not be remedied by the development company if it is not discovered for a day.
Zero-day vulnerabilities are extremely difficult to find, so they are very expensive on the black market, and some loopholes even bid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some low-level zero-day vulnerabilities have been made into everyday computer viruses by criminals, while high-level zero-day vulnerabilities have been bought off by national governments for future cyberwarfare.
Usually, a defense-grade computer virus uses 1-2 zero-day vulnerabilities, while the Stuxnet virus uses 4 zero-day vulnerabilities, and its destructive power is evident.
On that day, when engineers were carrying out experiments on uranium purification of daily centrifuges, the valves of 1,000 centrifuges suddenly lost control, causing the centrifuges to suddenly exceed the speed of the centrifuges by 40%. As the temperature gradually increased, the centrifuges were completely destroyed.
Fortunately, Iranian engineers rescued in time, and once the radioactive elements were leaked, a disaster-level nuclear leakage accident would occur.
Afterwards, Iran sent professionals to the Natanz nuclear industrial base, and they did not find the "Stuxnet" virus, but agreed that it was the aging phenomenon of centrifuges in Pakistan and that it would be good to change the equipment.
So Iran bought a new batch of centrifuges from Pakistan again, but within a few days, the tragedy happened again...
Two centrifuge overclocking incidents have brought Iran's relations with Pakistan to a freezing point, but Pakistan said the problem had never occurred in Pakistan and that it was Iran itself that should be reviewed.
It wasn't until the existence of the Stuxnet virus was announced on the Internet that Iran realized that these were all ghosts committed by Israel and the United States.
In the face of the "Stuxnet" virus, Iran is also helpless, more than 80% of their countries' computers have been invaded by the "Stuxnet" virus, and no one knows where they are, if you want to completely eliminate the "Stuxnet" virus, you need to replace all the computers in Iran, which is simply impossible to do.
As a result, in the years that followed, Iran's strategic nuclear weapons research was also reported. Iran's nuclear technology has been completely controlled by Israel, and Israel has used it to blackmail Iran, claiming that if Iran launches a war against Israel, it can destroy all important industrial facilities in Iran through computer viruses.
Just as the so-called black cauldron can not be carried alone, when people think that the "Stuxnet" virus is from the Hands of the Americans, but in fact, the "Stuxnet" virus is independently developed by Israel. The department responsible for virus research and development is the mysterious 8200 unit.
Inventor of the Stuxnet virus and member of the 8200 Mystery Force
- 【Code:8200】
If you ask Israeli youth what their dreams are, they will say a string of numbers in unison: 8200.
Israel's 8200 unit is the first batch of information-based troops created in Israel's military reform, the unit has no guns and ammunition, no tank missiles, but only through computers, research on the world's leading computer viruses, through network warfare to achieve the purpose of "four or two thousand pounds".
Unit 8200 is Israel's top information engineering professional scientists, which is the true "wisdom crystallization" of Israel. If a college student can serve in Unit 8200, he must be a top genius and respected by Israeli society.
The Stuxnet invasion of Iran is the masterpiece of Unit 8200 and the world's first true cyber war. With 2010 as the first year, cyber warfare has become the primary development direction of military strategies of various countries. Objectively speaking, the impact of this cyber war is far-reaching, and many countries are shrouded in invisible terror.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has evaluated the "Stuxnet" virus, saying that the "Stuxnet" virus can completely cause a second "Chernobyl nuclear accident".
In addition, the "Stuxnet" virus is also widely used to destroy national transportation, through the network to make the airport towers lose the command ability, let the aircraft in the air out of the air, let the city have a large-scale power outage, destroy the high-voltage power grid... The destructive power of this virus can even extend to all aspects of human life.
After the discovery of the "Stuxnet", the French game company Yubi created a surrealist game "Watchdog", in which the protagonist can control all the electronic devices in the city through the mobile phone, from national defense to personal mobile phones. While Israel has made it public, and Unit 8200 has done it, none of this is an illusion.
Of course, the "Stuxnet" virus has been fixed by the system company after it was made public, but if we go deep into the underlying logic, we will find that "Stuxnet" is just a term, as long as the zero-day vulnerability still exists, the virus we do not know will surface in the future.
Cybersecurity sounds like it doesn't have anything to do with us, but it does affect every aspect of our daily lives. Therefore, in the modern military, the development of cybersecurity strategy has even exceeded the arms race of any weapons and equipment. Many countries began to recruit relevant high-tech personnel, perhaps they did not let go of a gun, did not do any military training, but they defended their countries all the time.
As the Internet becomes more and more inseparable from our daily lives, even if we are not core members of the cybersecurity sector, we must protect our personal information, and the Iranian nuclear blockade is a lesson for the past, because no one would have thought that a country's weapon would be destroyed on the fishing rod by the pond.