A follow-up about Stuxnet. The AP, citing an intelligence report from an unknown country, says Stuxnet threatens the plant’s (and the public’s) safety.
VIENNA – The control systems of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant have been penetrated by a computer worm unleashed last year, according to a foreign intelligence report that warns of a possible Chernobyl-like disaster once the site becomes fully operational.
Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, also has raised the specter of the 1986 reactor explosion in Ukraine, but suggested last week that the danger had passed.
The report, drawn up by a nation closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear program and obtained by The Associated Press, said such conclusions were premature and based on the “casual assessment” of Russian and Iranian scientists at Bushehr.
With control systems disabled by the virus, the reactor would have the force of a “small nuclear bomb” it said.
via AP Exclusive: Report warns of Iran nuke disaster – Yahoo! News.
I think that’s absurd. Russians grumbling because (many suspect) they were used as the vector for the virus.
Stuxnet messed up the centrifuges at a processing facility for making weapons grade plutonium. They don’t even have a reactor at any of the affected sites.
The concern is that the virus migrated to the other SCADA devices and embedded itself there, I believe.
It’s very hard to fact-check this AP story as there is no mention at all about the country that wrote the “intelligence report.”