The Conficker insect was one of the more challenging and potentially destructive piece of malware in the preceding 10 . Earlier report card have suggested that Stuxnet was created by the U.S. and Israeli politics , and now Reuters has a beginning telling them Conficker was also used tonegate Iran ’s atomic program .
John Bumgarner , a retire Army intelligence officer and leader of the non - profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit , articulate that the virus was part of a carefully - executed plan to deliver the Stuxnet computer virus to fundamental pieces of equipment used in Iranian nuclear facilities . Despite other researchers conclusions that Conficker was not used in the attack , Bumgarner kept digging , and as Reuters writes , belives he find the connection .
It took Bumgarner months to conclude that Conficker was create by the source of Stuxnet .
First , he noticed that the two pieces of malware were both written with unprecedented sophistication , which caused him to distrust they were touch . He also found that infection rates for both were far higher in Iran than the United States and that both spread by work the same vulnerability in Windows .
He did more digging , compare appointment and time revenue stamp on different versions of Conficker and Stuxnet , and found a correlation — central dates relate to their development and deployment overlap . That aid him key out April Fool ’s Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , April 1 , 2009 , as the launch day of the month for the attack .
Bumgarner believe the attackers break up that date to send a message to Iran ’s leaders . It marked the 30th day of remembrance of the annunciation of an Islamic commonwealth by Ayatollah Khomeini after a national referendum .
He also identified two other signals cover in the Stuxnet codification , based on the dates when key mental faculty were compiled , or translated from programming text into a piece of software that could endure on a computer .
But induce virus on the real computers inside Iran ’s quickness proved more sly . Because they ’re not connected to the internet , Bumgarner believe that the U.S. government got the computer virus into the body politic through a fake website , then plant an operative inside Iran ’s quickness , who loaded the computer virus onto pertinent computers with a USB private road . He cerebrate that was enough to ruin the Siemens - fabricate extractor , which Stuxnet was designed to impress .
Is this even real life ? It seems too real to be on-key . But when you think about the fact that the Conficker virus never ended up doing anything in the millions of electronic computer it spread to , this theory seems workable . Either way , the entire tarradiddle is a great read . [ ReutersviaThe Verge ]
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