Iran nuclear chief reveals sabotage at Fordow facility
TEHRAN, Iran (PressTV) – Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has revealed sabotage operations at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility in August just ahead of a scheduled visit by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.
“On Friday August 17, 2012, power lines running from the city of Qom to Fordow facility were cut using explosives. It should be reminded that power outage is a way of damaging centrifuge machines. In the early hours of the following day, [IAEA] inspectors demanded a snap inspection of the facility,” Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi told the IAEA meeting in Vienna.
Abbasi went on to warn the UN nuclear watchdog against the infiltration by “terrorists and saboteurs.” “We must make director-general of IAEA and his colleagues aware of this issue and give the necessary warning [to them].”
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Iran: Saboteurs cut power lines to nuclear bunker
(Jerusalem Post) – Explosives were used to cut the electricity power lines to Iran’s Fordow underground enrichment plant last month in an apparent attempt to sabotage Tehran’s atomic advances, its nuclear energy chief said.
He also told the annual member state gathering of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that “the same act” had been carried out on power lines to Iran’s main enrichment plant near the central town of Natanz, without giving a date.
Iran has often accused Israel and Tehran’s Western enemies of being behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and of trying to damage its nuclear program in other ways, such as cyber attacks.
Iran uses the Fordow facility to enrich uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, the part of its work that most worries the West as it takes it significantly closer to the 90 percent level needed for bombs. It built the site some 80 metres below rock and soil to better protect it against enemy strikes.
Abbasi-Davani, in unusually strong language in an international forum, also accused the IAEA of a cynical approach and mismanagement and suggested that “terrorists and saboteurs” might have infiltrated it.
US accused of creating three more computer super-viruses
(RT) – Two independent teams of researchers studying the Flame computer virus believe that the maker of the malware — all but certain to be the United States — has architected three additional programs to conduct clandestine cyberwar or espionage.
Both Symantec Corp of the United States and Kaspersky Lab of Russia acknowledged on Monday that their research of Flame has led them to believe that whoever had a role in creating that virus has also put their efforts behind three other similar programs.
A team of engineers at Kaspersky released new information on Monday collected during forensic analysis of Flame command-and-Control servers that were examined with the assistance of Symantec, ITU-IMPACT and CERT-Bund/BSI. Researchers had first disclosed in May that Flame, a sophisticated espionage virus, targeted computer systems in Iran and was likely the product of a nation-state, specifically the US. With this week’s update, however, it appears as if the United States’ endeavors in cyberwar may have stretched past even what researchers had imagined.
“Based on the code from the servers, it can be said that they were working with at least three other programs similar to Flame. The code names of those programs are IP, SP and SPE,” Kaspersky Lab chief security expert Aleks Gostev told RT.
Although the United States government has not gone on the record to take credit for either Flame or Stuxnet, a similar computer worm that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities first discovered in 2010, experts have long maintained that the US is involved in both viruses, perhaps even enlisting Israeli scientists for assistance.
Stuxnet Super Virus – US/Israel Cooperation Cyber Warfare on Iran