Stuxnet Worm

Interesting bit of work this worm. Being called "military grade" in a lot of places. I just enjoy the fact that the title article actually seems to think it may have succeeded in damaging the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

On July 17, 2009 WikiLeaks posted a cryptic notice:

Two weeks ago, a source associated with Iran’s nuclear program confidentially told WikiLeaks of a serious, recent, nuclear accident at Natanz. Natanz is the primary location of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. WikiLeaks had reason to believe the source was credible however contact with this source was lost. WikiLeaks would not normally mention such an incident without additional confirmation, however according to Iranian media and the BBC, today the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, has resigned under mysterious circumstances. According to these reports, the resignation was tendered around 20 days ago.

A cross-check with the official Iran Students News Agency archives confirmed the resignation of the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

According to official IAEA data, the number of actually operating centrifuges in Natanz shrank around the time of the accident Wikileaks wrote about was reduced substantially .

Very interesting.

According to DEBKAfiles the Iranians are in a panic to get someone to fix it since apparently their own efforts not only failed, but made things worse. I'm not certain of the veracity of the site, so read on your own and decide.

Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus.
None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany.
The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.

One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."

I really hope that report is accurate. And I really hope no one helps them. This could be very good news.

As to the worm's creator. They're going on pretty slim evidence.

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment.

Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. In interviews in several countries, experts in both cyberwar and nuclear enrichment technology say the Stuxnet mystery may never be solved.

Personally, I think it was the Israelis. They have the ability and the motive. The US does as well, but this doesn't sound like something the ONE would have allowed. I'd be proud of him for the first time if he did.

Schneier posted on it being impressive as well.

WW1 Ended On September 26, 2010

Yep, reparations are finally done. Took them 92 years, well, with a big war that those reparations caused.

I'll stick with Keynes on this one:
"Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself."

Makes one wonder about where the US debt will lead.

Sibelius Thuggish Rule

This bothered me extremely the first time I heard it, but then I realized that in 2014 when this all is supposed to happen there is a chance that she won't actually be there. And if she is, I expect that the lawsuits will become a tsunami.

'As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs—we knew that," President Obama said at his press conference Friday in response to a question about rising health spending.

That wasn't how he sold the plan, but, anyway, that's a truism. Here's another: The White House was always going to blame insurance companies for any cost increases, even when its own policies cause them.

Witness Kathleen Sebelius's Thursday letter to America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group—a thuggish message even by her standards. The Health and Human Services secretary wrote that some insurers have been attributing part of their 2011 premium increases to ObamaCare and warned that "there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."

Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders? They're more subtle than this in Caracas.

What Ms. Sebelius really means is that the government will prohibit insurers from doing business if reality is not politically convenient for Democrats. ObamaCare includes a slew of mandated benefits for next year, such as allowing children to remain on their parents' plans until age 26 and "free" preventative care (i.e., no direct out-of-pocket cost sharing for consumers). The tone of Ms. Sebelius's letter suggests that she doesn't understand that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that if Congress mandates new benefits, premiums will rise.

In a lot of ways I'd love to see the Dems lose all control of the House and Senate, but on the other side of the argument, they'll then be able to blame the Repubs for all the problems when they conflict with the desires of the ONE. Frankly, a slight majority in both houses for the Dems would ensure Obama would be restricted to only one term and end this BS.

ObamaCare gives Ms. Sebelius's regulators the power to define "unreasonable" premium hikes, which will mean whatever they decide it will mean later this fall. She promised to keep a list of insurers "with a record of unjustified rate increases" and then to bar them from ObamaCare's subsidized "exchanges" when they come on line in 2014. In other words, insurers must accept price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now.

The usual way of governing. Don't bother to define what the law actually means, just leave it so vague as to allow the career bureaucrats to make up the rules. This Obamination really must be terminated.

Ground Zero Mosque - More of What it Means

This is an interesting little bit of an article that no doubt will be ignored. Caught this linked at Wizbang.

Here's the interesting bit of historical perspective.

Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero? In fact, what is pro posed is not a mosque -- nor even an "Islamic cultural center."

In Islam, every structure linked to the faith and its rituals has a precise function and character. A mosque is a one-story gallery built around an atrium with a mihrab (a niche pointing to Mecca) and one, or in the case of Shiites two, minarets.

Other Islamic structures, such as harams, zawiyyahs, husseinyiahs and takiyahs, also obey strict architectural rules. Yet the building used for spreading the faith is known as Dar al-Tabligh, or House of Proselytizing.

This 13-story multifunctional structure couldn't be any of the above.
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In fact, the proposed structure is known in Islamic history as a rabat -- literally a connector. The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.

The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word "raid"). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.

After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat -- or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias. Later Muslim rulers used the tactic of ghazva to conquer territory in the Persian and Byzantine empires. After each raid, they built a rabat to prepare for the next razzia.

It is no coincidence that Islamists routinely use the term ghazva to describe the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington. The terrorists who carried out the attack are referred to as ghazis or shahids (martyrs).

Thus, building a rabat close to Ground Zero would be in accordance with a tradition started by the Prophet. To all those who believe and hope that the 9/11 ghazva would lead to the destruction of the American "Great Satan," this would be of great symbolic value.

Further evidence that this isn't a place to put the Mosque. It is clearly worse than insulting to place it at Ground Zero since this is not only an insult to those who were murdered there, but it is as though they are planting a flag of conquest over the site intentionally. If that isn't a propaganda coup for them, I'm not sure what you would call it.

But, I doubt you'll hear any of this in the MSM, since it doesn't go along with the narrative they wish to proclaim about moderate Islam. Nor will you hear this discussed by any politician since it would be a clear eyed understanding that Moslems don't choose to live as we do in the US, they want to turn us all to dhimmi or eliminate us and our culture completely.

And if you haven't caught the discussion of dawa related to all this you should read Andrew McCarthy's writing on the subject.