A report out of the Netherlands claims that a Dutch man played a key role in the infamous Stuxnet worm attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities before the virus accidentally escaped into the wider world.
It is not news that the United States and Israel are widely believed to be the creators of the sophisticated Stunxnet malware that exploited a zero-day vulnerability to sabotage Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, or that the United States is believed to have later attempted to use a version of the Stuxnet virus Targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
If the report comes from dutch times Prima facie, sources claim that Erik van Sabben, an agent of the AIVD (Dutch intelligence agency), also assisted in the attack.
It is believed that Eric van Saben entered Natanz to work undercover for a company that installed equipment at nuclear facilities. Not only would such an individual be able to gather technical information about the computer system that manages the centrifuge, they would also be able to introduce malware on a USB stick.
This certainly sounds like a way to introduce malware into an air-gapped system, rather than leaving a USB stick in a parking lot and hoping someone picks it up and plugs it into a PC.
Perhaps the most surprising statement in the report is the almost casual remark that Stuxnet “cost more than $1 billion to develop.”
Even for a malware as targeted and revolutionary as Stuxnet, this seems like a huge amount of money to spend on a piece of malware. I find this number difficult to take seriously without more explanation of how it is calculated.
Much of the report is produced by Dutch news Seems to be based on a long article People’s Daily Since 2019, written by Dutch investigative journalist Huib Modderkolk.
However, the article makes no mention of Erik van Sabben and claims that AIVD recruited an unnamed Iranian (not Dutch) engineer.
Unfortunately, Eric van Saben was unable to respond to claims that he played a key role in one of the most notorious cyberattacks in history. He died in a motorcycle accident in January 2009 at the age of 36, shortly after leaving Iran.
3 Comments
Pingback: Malware that cost a billion dollars to develop? • Graham Crowley – Tech Empire Solutions
Pingback: Malware that cost a billion dollars to develop? • Graham Crowley – Mary Ashley
Pingback: Malware that cost a billion dollars to develop? • Graham Crowley – Paxton Willson