Stuxnet cyberweapon looks to be one on a production line, researchers say

Somewhere in the world, the creators of the Stuxnet worm are involved in a cyberweapon manufacturing operation that can pump out supersophisticated malicious software tweaked for specific missions, new targets, and detection evasion.

Stuxnet, the first military-grade cyberweapon known to the world, has been called a digital missile and a cyber-Hiroshima bomb. But it was not a one-shot blast, new research shows. Rather, Stuxnet is part of a bigger cyberweapons system – a software platform, or framework – that can modify already-operational malicious software, researchers at two leading antivirus companies told the Monitor.

The platform appears to be able to fire and reload – again and again – to recalibrate for different targets and to bolt on different payloads, but with minimal added cost and effort, say researchers at Kaspersky Labs and at Symantec.

Kaspersky, based in Moscow, and Symantec, in Sunnyvale, Calif., are antivirus companies, competitors in fact. Each has had teams laboring independently for more than a year to decipher Stuxnet. Both are amazed to have discovered digital fingerprints of a much larger family of weaponized software.

What each has uncovered are at least seven cyberweapon "launcher" files created from a common software platform. A launcher file is needed to stealthily insert the malicious payload (Stuxnet, for instance) onto a computer, as well as carrying the payload files and encryption keys needed to unfurl them and make them function.

All seven launcher files contain chunks of identical source code, yet differ in small but important ways, according to a Kaspersky Labs study released last week. Just two of those files are known to be used by the Stuxnet program. Two others are related to an espionage software program called Duqu, discovered last fall.

That leaves three launcher files with no known affiliations. While those three could be affiliated with as-yet-undetected variants of Stuxnet or Duqu, they are more likely to be affiliated with undiscovered cyberweapons operating "in the wild" somewhere in cyberspace, researchers say.

Kaspersky's findings are buttressed by researchers at Symantec, which led the deciphering effort on Stuxnet in 2010. The companies' findings imply that Stuxnet's creators are not resting on past deeds, such as the attack on Iran's nuclear fuel manufacturing facilities. Instead, they are apparently churning out new cyberweapons for new missions from that same common software platform, researchers from both firms told the Monitor.

"Stuxnet's creators used a [software] platform to package and deliver it, because they wanted to be able to make many cyberweapons easily and be able to change them rapidly for targeting and attack," says Costin Raiu, director of the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Labs, in a phone interview from Romania.

"What's going on seems not so much like a weapons factory as much as a super-secret lab that creates experimental cyberweapons," he adds. "It's more like they're making ion cannons or something – but for cyberwar. These are not normal line weapons, but the highest tech possible to wage cyberwar and cybersabotage."

First signs that Stuxnet was part of a larger family of malicious software, or malware, came with the discovery in September 2010 of Duqu, a specialized espionage program. Duqu appears to be designed to zero in on industrial secrets related to Stuxnet's target, and its code contains digital fingerprints akin to some in Stuxnet, indicating it was created with some of the same source code. Stuxnet's mission, much of it now decoded, was to wreak havoc on Iran's ability to refine nuclear fuel using centrifuges.

"We've done the same analysis Kaspersky has, and seen the same timelines, dates, encryption keys," says Liam O Murchu, manager of operations for Symantec Security Response, in a phone interview. "We think Stuxnet and Duqu are made by the same team, with the same goal.... They can change [the software weapon produced on the common platform], manipulate it, have different payloads."

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