Anonymous claims they are in possession of the Stuxnet Virus

[TalkingDog]

http://blogs.forbes.com/chrisbarth/2011/02/11/anonymous-claims-possession-of-insidious-stuxnet-virus/

“Anonymous is now in possession of Stuxnet – problem, officer?” tweeted user by the name of Topiary. Topiary’s profile describes the user as an online activist and a “Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet.”

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gVXdvMz_Qc0J:twitter.com/atopiary+%23AnonLeaks+%40atopiary+Stuxnet&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com





THIS... could get interesting.

[TalkingDog]

1. kickety split

nt

[Electric Monk]

2. That's the same one that hit the uranium enrichment facilities in Iran, right?

Designed to hit industrial equipment, not regular PCs, iirc?

[Mojorabbit]

3. Oh my.....nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Cyberwar gets a new meaning now

[Lugnut]

5. Very interesting. n/t

[glinda]

6. Things keep getting more interesting.

[CabalPowered]

7. Very interesting

There's a lot more HBGary emails in the pipeline.

http://twitter.com/kaepora

[tammywammy]

8. Interesting. n/t

[Capn Sunshine]

9. Oh, awesome, its the breakdown of society, dudes! Anarchy just RULES!

This is the Seventh Seal, right?
ITS THE END OF DAYS BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

[leveymg]

10. Stuxnet has no effect except on Siemens-design industrial controllers.

The whole thing was a bunch of hype. It takes about 5 minutes to swap out the logic boards in the programmable control units that were infected. These are only used in some industrial plants, and are easily and cheaply replaced.

[billyclem]

11. In a system of uranium enrichment by centrifuge. n/t

[originalpckelly]

12. They will be able to reverse engineer it and determine what...

if anything made it special. If it's just another virus, then it's no biggie, but if there is something unique in its approach, then that will be used.

Plus, it's a coup just to have the damn thing.

[originalpckelly]

14. Plus, they might be able to find out who made it.

If it was a government, like the US government, that could have just a wee bit of impact in international affairs. Although, whoever made it probably covered their tracks pretty well.

[xchrom]

13. ruh-roh. nt

[toddaa]

15. How Stuxnet spreads is what makes it dangerous

Note that Stuxnet is not a virus, it's a worm. It's function is to find a specific piece program on a computer network and attack it. In Stuxnet's case, it's target is a program written by Siemans to control industrial components. A skilled programmer could easily modify Stuxnet to seek any program and attack it. The scary part of Stuxnet is that it looks quite benign until it finds what it's looking for and then it's attack is so subtle, it's often too late before you notice the damage it is doing.

Anonymous has not proven itself to be a particularly sophisticated hacker collective, but that doesn't mean much given how insecure their targets are. There hack into HBGary says more about HBGary's horrid security than anything about Anonymous' skills, but the fact that once they were in, they wrecked incredible damage, does indicate that some of people who participate in the attacks are more than your average script kiddies. It's not inconceivable that more nepharious hacker groups may members participating in Anonymous and some of them have the skills to reverse engineer Stuxnet and modify it for their own purposes.

Whatever your opinion of Anonymous is, consider this, Stuxnet is now in the wild and it won't be long before its source code is found on darknet site.

[ellie]

16. Bwahahahaha!

I heart Anonymous.

[NuclearDem]

17. So wait, let me see if I'm understanding this right...

Anonymous got a copy of the worm FROM HBGary when they hacked the system, or was a stuxnet copy among the fake emails they dumped onto the system afterward?

[CabalPowered]

18. Most likely..

Anon realized that hbgary had a full copy of it after reading the emails. At that point, it was just a matter of finding it on the hbgary file server they had already hacked. Also to note that when asked what they're going to do with it.. one reponded.. lol.. idk.

I think the more burning question is .. how did hbgary get it to begin with? It appears they've had it since Sept/Oct of last year.

[CabalPowered]

19. Correction

It appears hbgary got a sample of it from McAfee and we're tinkering with it for their own use.

http://crowdleaks.org/hbgary-wanted-to-suppress-stuxnet-research/

[Electric Monk]

20. kick nt

[BOG PERSON]

21. NEEEERDS

[jeff47]

22. Um....it's really easy to get a copy of Stuxnet

Just takes a few $$ to one of many the anti-virus companies.