[ExI] stuxnet hits commie nuke plant, space station

[BillK]

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 9:01 PM, spike  wrote:
> Local internet security hipsters, does this sound believable to you?  That
> nuke plant strains my imagination, but the Space Station?  Every line of
> code to any spacecraft is reviewed and tested.  Kaspersky is supposed to be
> credible, but I have a hard time believing this story:
>

Kaspersky was misquoted.

He said that Russian astronauts had several times infected the ISS
with viruses from USB memory sticks and he knew of a  Russian nuclear
power station that Stuxnet had infected via a USB stick. He didn't say
that Stuxnet had got into the ISS, just some other viruses.

So it is down to the Russians for not scanning all USB sticks
thoroughly. Though virus writers are always trying to evade scanners,
so some might have got through testing. Remember that virus writers
test all their creations against the latest virus scanning packages.

It is a common technique to spread viruses. Just drop some USB sticks
in the car park. People, being people, think "Oh goody - a free memory
stick", and take it in to their workplace and plug it in to see what's
on it. Bingo - Infected pc. And if it is on the company network, the
whole network is soon infected.


BillK