fukushima daiichi nuclear plant damaged by stuxnet?

Did Stuxnet infiltrate Fukushima Daiichi plant? The question is getting asked--and rightfully so! Fukushima plant uses Siemens Supervisory Control And Data Acquistion Software (SCADA), which Stuxnet is designed specifically to target. Is Stuxnet implicated in rendering, say, water pumps inoperable, a question asked recently on The Ugly Truth podcast? A Stuxnet link is also examined at whatREALLYhappened.com, "So now the difficulty the Fukushima nuclear plant operators faced in recovering control over their runaway reactors takes on a darker significance. Remember that the first problem following the quake was that the automated shutdown systems failed to operate at some of the reactors, because pumps failed and valves would not open even while running on batteries; the very sorts of mischief Stuxnet supposedly was designed to cause at Iran's power station." Multiple failures experienced at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant begs the question whether Stuxnet malware involved? Webster Tarpley's call for action seems truer than ever at the moment: get active--or get radioactive!

update: attack code for scada vulnerabilities released online

israel tested stuxnet at dimona

Israel took pages from spy thriller, by building identical centrifuges to those at Natanz, to test effectiveness of stuxnet worm. Cryptogon carries New York Times article. An American nuclear intelligence expert related, “To check out the worm, you have to know the machines..The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.” In 2008, Siemens cooperated with the United States to identify vulnerabilities of their computer controllers the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world at the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading nuclear research and development facility. The NYT article concludes: "The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart." It's a case of life imitating art!

update: stuxnet: a violation of US computer security law