[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-45615-en":3,"doc-seo-45615-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},45615,4810365810221,"Aurora","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d",8,"Research & Report","Countdown to Zero Day Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First","Countdown to Zero Day traces how the world’s first major digital sabotage campaign culminated in Stuxnet and its enabling “zero-day” exploits. The narrative begins with IAEA observations at Natanz: centrifuges are removed and replaced at an abnormal rate, prompting scrutiny of surveillance records and enrichment activity. It then frames the technical mystery inside industrial control systems, linking suspicious equipment failures to concealed malware operations that reshape the dynamics of cyber and industrial security.","Copyright © 2014 by Kim Zetter All rights reserved.  \nPublished in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.  \n[www.crownpublishing.com](www.crownpublishing.com)  \nCROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.  \nPortions of this work were originally published in different form in “How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History” copyright © [Wired.com. Used with](Wired.com. Used with)[ ](Wired.com. Used with)[permission. First published July 2011.](permission. First published July 2011.)  \nCataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress.  \nISBN 978-0-7704-3617-9  \neBook ISBN 978-0-77043618-6  \nPRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Jacket design by Oliver Munday Jacket photograph: DigitalGlobe/Getty Images  \nv3.1  \nFor SC and for my parents—with love and great gratitude, though gratitude is insufficient for all that you’ve done.  \nCONTENTS  \nCover  \nTitle Page  \nCopyright  \nDedication  \nPrologue: The Case of the Centrifuges  \n1. Early Warning  \n2. 500 Kilobytes of Mystery  \n3. Natanz  \n4. Stuxnet Deconstructed  \n5. Springtime for Ahmadinejad  \n6. Digging for Zero Days  \n7. Zero-Day Paydays  \n8. The Payload  \n9. Industrial Controls Out of Control  \n10. Precision Weapon  \n11. A Digital Plot Is Hatched  \n12. A New Fighting Domain  \n13. Digital Warheads  \n14. Son of Stuxnet  \n15. Flame  \n16. Olympic Games  \n17. The Mystery of the Centrifuges  \n18. Qualified Success  \n19. Digital Pandora  \nAcknowledgments  \nPROLOGUE  \nTHE CASE OF THE CENTRIFUGES  \nIt was January 2010 when officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations body charged with monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, first began to notice something unusual happening atthe uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran.  \nInside the facility’s large centrifuge hall, buried like a bunker more than fifty feet beneath the desert surface, thousands of gleaming aluminum centrifuges were spinning at supersonic speed, enriching uranium hexafluoride gas as they had been for nearly two years. But over the last weeks, workers at the plant had been removing batches of centrifuges and replacing them with new ones. And they were doing so at a startling rate.  \nAt Natanz each centrifuge, known as an IR-1, has a life expectancy of about ten years. But the devices are fragile and prone to break easily. Even under normal conditions, Iran has to replace up to 10 percent of the centrifuges each year due to material defects, maintenance issues, and worker accidents.  \nIn November 2009, Iran had about 8,700 centrifuges installed at Natanz, so it would have been perfectly normal to see technicians decommission about 800 of them over the course of the year as the devices failed for one reason or another. But as IAEA officials added up the centrifuges removed over several weeks in December 2009 and early January, they realized that Iran was plowing through them at an unusual rate.  \nInspectors with the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards visited Natanz an average of twice a month—sometimes by appointment, sometimes unannounced—to track Iran’s enrichment activity and progress.1 Anytime workers at the plant decommissioned damaged or otherwise unusable centrifuges, they were required to line them up in a control area just inside the door of the centrifuge rooms until IAEA inspectors arrived at their next visit to examine them. The inspectors would run a handheld gamma spectrometer around each centrifuge to ensure that no  \nnuclear material was being smuggled out in them, then approve the centrifuges for removal, making note in reports sent back to IAEA headquarters in Vienna of the number that were decommissioned each time.  \nIAEA digital surveillance cameras, installed outside the door of each centrifuge room to monitor Iran’s enrichment activity, captured the technicians","cbCaisJHURhPvkt1","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaisJHURhPvkt1","pdf",2249195,1,395,"English","en",105,"# Prologue: The Case of the Centrifuges\n## Early Warning\n## 500 Kilobytes of Mystery\n## Natanz\n## Stuxnet Deconstructed\n## Digging for Zero Days\n## Zero-Day Paydays\n## The Payload\n## Industrial Controls Out of Control\n## Precision Weapon\n## A Digital Plot Is Hatched\n## A New Fighting Domain\n## Digital Warheads\n## Son of Stuxnet\n## Flame\n## Olympic Games\n## The Mystery of the Centrifuges\n## Qualified Success\n## Digital Pandora","[{\"question\":\"What unusual behavior did IAEA officials notice at Natanz in early 2010?\",\"answer\":\"They observed that uranium-enrichment centrifuges were being removed and replaced at a rate far higher than normal expectations for the facility.\"},{\"question\":\"How did the IAEA inspectors verify centrifuges during their visits?\",\"answer\":\"Inspectors used recorded surveillance imagery and ran handheld gamma spectrometers on centrifuges in order to check that no nuclear material was being smuggled out, then documented decommissioned units in reports to headquarters.\"},{\"question\":\"What explanation does the text begin to point to behind the centrifuge mystery?\",\"answer\":\"It suggests that destructive digital code had been quietly introduced months earlier into Natanz’s critical computer systems, implying malware activity as the underlying 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