[ISN] Cyber threat: Isro rules out Stuxnet attack on Insat-4 B

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 01:34:49 -0500 (CDT)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6733370.cms

12 Oct, 2010
Srinivas Laxman
The Economic Times

MUMBAI: Isro has ruled out possibility of the deadly Stuxnet internet 
worm attacking Insat-4 B satellite on July 7, resulting in 12 of its 24 
transponders shutting down.

Speaking to TOI from Bangalore on Monday, Isro officials, requesting 
anonymity, said that the worm only strikes a satellite’s programme logic 
controller (PLC).

“We can confirm that Insat-4 B doesn’t have a PLC. So the chances of the 
Stuxnet worm attacking it appear remote. In PLC’s place, Insat-4 B had 
its own indigenously-designed software which controlled the logic of the 
spacecraft,’’ said a source.

PLC’s main function is to control the entire “logic of the spacecraft’’. 
Other space experts described PLC as a digital computer used for 
automation of electro-mechanical processes.

Sources, however, said Isro is awaiting Jeffrey Carr’s presentation at 
Abu Dhabi next to know the full details of the Stuxnet internet worm. 
Carr in a blog published in Forbes recently suggested that the resumes 
of two former engineers at Isro’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre 
(LPSC) at Mahendra Giri in Tamil Nadu said that the Siemens S7-400 PLC 
was used in Insat-4 B, which can activate the Stuxnet worm.

[...]


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Received on Tue Oct 12 2010 - 23:34:49 PDT

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