back to article SCADA worm a 'nation state search-and-destroy weapon'

A highly sophisticated computer worm that has burrowed into industrial systems worldwide over the past year may have been a “search-and-destroy weapon” built to take out Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor, according to news reports published on Tuesday. The articles from IDG News and The Christian Science Monitor said the Stuxnet …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
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    @John Smith 19

    Is there a sentence missing from your post? Here goes anyway.

    The UK enrichment plant you're thinking of may be URENCO's Capenhurst plant, near Chester. At one time there was a selection of nuclear-related sites in and around Warrington and north Cheshire, not sure how many are still active.

    Wrt processors and languages: in the days of ladder logic, you might well get a proprietary processor effectively built from discrete logic. That was a long time back. Then along came processors based on off the shelf chips such as the AMD2900 bitslice, or based on off the shelf computer innards such as the PDP8 (honest [1]).

    Siemens S5 and S7 PLCs and indeed most of the recent non-bottom-end market can be programmed in a variety of languages besides ladder logic.

    One of the nicer, "open standard", languages was called FunctionChart/FunctionPlan (it's an IEC standard). Whatever the source language, the development tools on the host would convert the user input into data to be downloaded to the PLC, data which in turn gets executed by the processor on the PLC. Right now I don't know what processors are in common use or whether the PLC has an OS of any significance.

    "This is a *lot* of trouble to disrupt (or destroy) someone's *very* specific set of industrial plant."

    Quite. Almost, but not quite, an unbelievable amount of trouble.

    [1] http://www.plcs.net/chapters/history2.htm

  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Boffin

    AC@11:15

    "Is there a sentence missing from your post? Here goes anyway."

    Yes there was. You got the gist spot on.

    "The UK enrichment plant you're thinking of may be URENCO's Capenhurst plant, near Chester. "

    That's the one I was thinking of, although the primary school may be a UL. Excellent safety record although they were reputed to like propping up the bar come Friday afternoon.

    "Then along came processors based on off the shelf chips such as the AMD2900 bitslice, or based on off the shelf computer innards such as the PDP8 (honest [1])."

    AMD released the 29K series whose core seemed to be essentially 4 or 8 2900 bit slices on a chip. Very RISC. Very fast. IIRC it did a lot of business in printers so a PLC would be well within its capabilities. As for the PDP8. Just about the most popular minicomputer ever. Used as a core processor for early internet routers (for the *whole* campus) and IIRC Chorus had a regular order in for their steel plant mill control systems for *decades*.

    "languages was called FunctionChart/FunctionPlan "

    Sounds intriguing. I may investigate.

    "Quite. Almost, but not quite, an unbelievable amount of trouble."

    And now expanding into China.

    Does there seem to be a pattern emerging?

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