[ISN] Iran's Natanz nuclear facility recovered quickly from Stuxnet cyberattack

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021506501.html

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Foreign Service
February 16, 2011 

VIENNA - In an underground chamber near the Iranian city of Natanz, a 
network of surveillance cameras offers the outside world a rare glimpse 
into Iran's largest nuclear facility. The cameras were installed by U.N. 
inspectors to keep tabs on Iran's nuclear progress, but last year they 
recorded something unexpected: workers hauling away crate after crate of 
broken equipment.

In a six-month period between late 2009 and last spring, U.N. officials 
watched in amazement as Iran dismantled more than 10 percent of the 
Natanz plant's 9,000 centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium. Then, 
just as remarkably, hundreds of new machines arrived at the plant to 
replace the ones that were lost.

The story told by the video footage is a shorthand recounting of the 
most significant cyberattack to date on a nuclear installation. Records 
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear 
watchdog, show Iran struggling to cope with a major equipment failure 
just at the time its main uranium enrichment plant was under attack by a 
computer worm known as Stuxnet, according to Europe-based diplomats 
familiar with the records.

But the IAEA's files also show a feverish - and apparently successful - 
effort by Iranian scientists to contain the damage and replace broken 
parts, even while constrained by international sanctions banning Iran 
from purchasing nuclear equipment. An IAEA report due for release this 
month is expected to show steady or even slightly elevated production 
rates at the Natanz enrichment plant over the past year.

[...]


___________________________________________________________      
Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended
Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management,
Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery 
Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. 
Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure.
http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/