In 2010, cybersecurity experts uncovered a computer virus unlike anything seen before. This malware did not target personal computers or steal private data. Instead, it quietly sabotaged industrial machines, changing how the world thinks about cyber warfare. That computer virus, Stuxnet, is still felt today. Unlike most malware, Stuxnet was designed for one specific mission. It targeted highly specialized industrial … Read More
How the US Started Cyber War
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey, I love the listen this podcast and what I love more is that every show that I've been doing more and more till and fans have been coming and saying that they drove for hours to be at this show. And so if that's you, you want to come see me do some stand up. You got plenty of opportunities. January 27th, 28th. I'll be filming my comedy special in Nashville. That's a really big thing. If you can make it to those shows, I would love to see you there. And then I'll be doing new material. February 12th. I'll be in Houston, Texas on February 14th, Valentine's day. I'll be in Plano, which is near Dallas. 00:28 February 20th. I'll be in Kingsport, Tennessee, which is in Tennessee and then very 21st. I'll be in Fredericksburg, Virginia. February 22nd. I'll be in Charlotte, North Carolina at the comedy zone there. February 27th. I'll be in Milton, West Virginia. That's right. We're going everywhere, baby. February 28th. I'll be in Raleigh, North Carolina and March 8th. I'll be in Indianapolis, Indiana. I have plenty of dates. 00:50 You can always check out if you're listening to this in the future. You're like, oh dang, it's November right now and I missed all of those shows. You can always find my shows at jaronmyers.com slash shows. So I really want to see you there. Would love to hang out. Thanks for thanks for coming for real. Thanks for listening to this podcast and thanks for coming to my shows because this is my dream and it's still alive. 01:15 Hey, man. What's up? Have you ever heard of Stuxnet? 01:20 Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet Stuxnet 01:46 that because that was like the era where they were putting they're putting net on the end of something. You know, sounded very high tech. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. It would call be Stucks AI today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 02:11 Yeah, I know it was it's a laughter. It was it since it's yeah, I know all right theme song. uh 02:22 All the names in frozen are German. So it's like if you're watching frozen in German, it's a lot like if you watched, if they change all the names and frozen to be like Matt Anna and Elsa. And it's just like that's just a Brittany. 02:40 Klaus. Chris. 02:52 Okay, so let's begin is June seventeenth, two thousand and ten. You work for a company called a virus block ad at virus block, add a virus block at two thousand and ten is the era. So my this is when I had my job as a uh malware remover at a computer store. Yeah, this was this was the age where window to what that life was like. It was 03:18 I told you this before. Most of the job was people calling and saying their computer didn't work and yours like. Did you try to turn it off and turn it back on and then they would do that on the phone and they would go wow you did it and we would be like all right, that's twenty five dog and then and then they would never yeah, but we would never a lot of what it was was dudes bringing in their computer and being like yeah, it just doesn't work for some reason and then we would be like. Do you think it could probably be the two terabytes of 03:47 videos that you've downloaded onto this thing and there. No, what do you I've never seen those videos before? Yeah, you probably don't part of the all the illegal songs you have on this pro. It's gumming it down a little bit. No, it's I think it's because I downloaded Internet Explorer. I'm sure it is Internet. sure it's Internet. You're right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah, Internet Explorer sucked though, so no, so back then 04:13 And now I don't even know if this job is as because viruses just aren't as common anymore. mean, I was just were very common before. Yeah, yeah, there's still a random pop ups and it would just start opening all this stuff and like it was yeah. I mean, ever since I got a Mac, I've never well, there's still a thing, but the problem is you can get a lot more money and data from attacking a website than you can an individual right personal computer. Right, right, right. And so like those things like there's just not as much of a 04:43 market for exactly black market for it, I guess, and it's also the juice isn't really worth the squeeze because like it's easier to just email someone and trick them than it is to get a virus on their machine. Of course, like you don't need a fire, but early in the days it was that was very, you know, you to look out for that. You get viruses on computer. was a big thing. It would disable your whole machine. You know he had to bring it into us. We'd have to on download certain that we had special software that then 05:10 detected where those things were. It also was kind of the wild, like certain files. It was yeah, it was very intricate like web that that was before web browsers had like they would show. Oh hey, this is a dangerous website. You write to proceed like there was just a lot of stuff like it was kind of wild west and it's like easier to stumble upon something sketchy. Yeah. Now all you do is just go to Facebook. That's true. That's right. There's like six websites now. 05:35 and that's but also as more things have become app based yeah, that's rather than web based. You're not opening as we're on the links on apps anymore on the web anymore. You're opening links through apps and if you think it's going to be sketchy, you just do it on your work computer instead. That's right. So Stuxnet 2010 yeah, it's June 17th, 2010. Okay, and we're we're where Belarus. Okay, and so this company it's called um Virus Block Ada. 06:05 and that's like a literal just translation. I don't know what I'm assuming. A D A means something. Yeah. Ada means something in Belarusian, but I do not know. I don't know if Bella Rujan is the language they think there. I know that just keep going. People from Belarus are called Belarusians. I know that for sure. Sure. They probably just speak Russian. I'm guessing because I'm so know that state. Sure. They speak Russian, but they're like, well, it's Bella Russian here. 06:34 anyways, so they get a normal support quest and don't stop. I hear the thing we installed this timer and you look at this time all the time now and it's this passive aggressive way where I'm doing a bit and you don't think it's worth our time and you just look up at the time here. You're doing it now as I'm talking about it, which I realize is kind of funny because you're also breaking the third wall a little bit, but you're also thirteen so annoying five sixteen. 07:01 Tim has a long time you spent on that bit. It's not. It was a bit. It was a genuine thing of me. This was that you want genuine laughter and genuine complaining about your behavior. Just edit, edit him out, edit me out of this podcast here. Let me get you a shot without being it so that way you could just make me be gone. 07:24 So. 07:28 This is really hard to turn. 07:31 So Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered on seventeen June two thousand and ten and thought to have been in development since at least two thousand five. You're going to spoil the story. Sure, I don't want you to spoil it. Okay, so this company that virus blocker is a is a company. Yeah, so they get one of their clients reaches out and says hey, we got this this virus. Take a look at it. Tell us how to fix it okay, and so they send 08:01 they send all the email was written in English or Belarusian probably fell. I'm assuming because they knew how to read it. Nobody you can only speak the language. This was the twenty ten. You can only see the local language that my Dennis. This is what I these where I keep looking at the clock. Dude, that's a throw away joke. I know I do it and then you go and I made it better. What if we for I took it through a joke and I caught it and I held on to it I made it a good joke. I mean the fun joke that we can hang out on for a minute parked it 08:31 So they are looking at the virus. They're looking at the virus. Yeah, here's the thing. Most viruses that they get in, they're very rudimentary. Right. You look at it for a few minutes, you figure out how it works and you can develop a fix for it. Right. They get into this thing and they're like, this is different. And this actually ended up taking them six months to figure out how this virus worked. And they took it to the press and it 09:00 changed the world forever. uh The Stuxnet Iris ah because how do I, how do I illustrate this? The client that they had was Iran and they Iran had located this. Are you talking about Iran or are you talking about Iran, which is the running app from Apple talking about both? No, I'm talking about the state. 09:30 Iraq and Iran. Is it not Iran? Am I in yeah? I wrong? uh I was I was joking. was yeah, so they're out Iran, Iran, Geez, now I'm self conscious about it. They're out in Ron. No, it was Iran was their client. They sent in this virus and I ran. I ran 10:05 I'm never going to say this right in this episode. I know you've me up now. You I'm pretty sure it's pronounced. I got me all messed up. I'm pretty sure it's a run. You just did both ways. You just did both versions. I say it the same way. Well, you said I'm pretty sure it's pronounced. I ran and he said I'm pretty sure it's pronounced I run. Okay, you did both of them. You're in my head. I know you know you're in and you're driving it in okay, so a calm down buddy. 10:34 their client was the state of Iran. Let's take some deep. Let's do this. 10:41 so much wasted time. Please talk. Please keep talking. Tell a story. Thank you. All right. Don't look at the clock. I was trying to Zen out so I Ron they were the client. 10:56 Which is neither of them. There's Iran and Iran and you went Iran. oh 11:15 Oh, I love it. Iran, the run company is hired by the run by the country of Iran. Yes, and so the country of Iran, they have a a facility called Natanz and a tons is a nuclear facility. Oh yeah, and they were essentially what they uncovered. They took this to the press. They're like okay, so this is an interesting little bit of code that we found because this code was uh 11:44 very sophisticated. It featured four zero day exploits, which do know what is your day exploit is yeah? Scribe it to me. No, that's your job and if you're going to lie, describe it me. Why would I lie here? I know what it is, but you I describe it better, but I think you should tell. I think you tell everyone else. Yeah, I think you should tell everyone. is your day exploit 12:12 is it is an exploit in a computer software right that did not exist before. No one knew about this until the day it was exposed right and so there's not a fix out there right. We're going to have to fix it. It's days. have zero days to fix. The problem is the concept because it's out there. The virus is exploiting it right. 12:35 you are trying to so there are four zero day exploits inside this and zero to exploits are there's no common fix for it already. You got to you have zero days to fix it right, so like you've got to fix this today. They're the most complicated exploits out there right. There are bug bounty programs where companies will literally pay millions of dollars if you find these and show them to them because they're that pick of a deal um and they are because other ex other most viruses that we were dealing with at the computer shop that are infecting 13:05 personal computers were things that we used existing software to identify and remove those viruses because they were known and that that's what I'm saying. Yeah like they were you know we could figure out which files to delete. We like we knew how those worked. Yeah, this is something that's like oh we have no idea how this is working and we also have no fix for it yeah to have four zero to exploits is unbelievable, unbelievable, 13:37 yeah. Okay, so here's what it is. What a guy's, what it is. We're looking at a pretty good mood. I don't know what happened, but Tim is like that guy is always fully crashing out over here and like I'm or for real try to do the other. So okay, so 14:00 I don't know what it was about the rad thing. know I didn't know I to bother. I'm sorry I would. It was a was a worthless bit. It wasn't worth. Let's pick it made me feel like a word. This person 14:13 I don't know how to say I ran and it makes me so Iran. uh 14:30 So the way it worked is this uh worm found its way into their computer system. Yeah. And it spent a full month. The code was written to where it was spent a full month just monitoring how the systems worked. Okay. And then essentially recorded everything that happened, recorded all the data and then it built lookalike data. So that way when it executed its attack, it could show that data to the end users. 15:00 that were running things and say, look, everything's fine. This is what is happening. So that was one of their exploits within there. The other thing that they did is they went to a series of gas centrifuges and they essentially turned up the pressure on these centrifuges to where they're going to break. what they, what they figured, Oh, well what, what it was designed to do, I should say, wasn't to just make it to where it's going to hit this limit and then just explode. Right. 15:29 It was going to increase the pressure enough to where it's going to cause a little bit of damage, but then it was going to decrease the pressure to show that lookalike fake data to all the people monitoring the systems while it was increasing the pressure without actually causing any severe damage. over the course of months and months and months, they just, every so often, this worm would increase the pressure on the systems, cause a little bit of damage, show that fake data, bring it back down. Nobody there knew what was going on. 15:57 until eventually they did this enough times where all that pressure damaged all these to the point where they weren't usable. And the engineers at, this was the Natanz nuclear facility, were getting very confused because they were like, we keep having these centrifuges get over pressure and we're seeing damage that looks like over pressure, but we don't have any data that shows any over pressure ever happening. And so they were really racking their brains on how this was possible. 16:26 They were going back through their code to try to figure out the reporting systems. They were going through all of the actual physical hardware on these centrifuges to figure out is there some sort of leak or something that's causing this or something that's breaking because they couldn't figure out why it was happening. And they did this. This worked for a handful of months where this just slowly kept working up these centrifuges. The other thing, and so this was a very ah surgical worm to where it was 16:55 providing that fake data to where they wouldn't be able to see that something was actually wrong. was working very slowly because they could have just bumped those up to a hundred and blew them all up. Sure. And then it would be over. But what it appeared and what the Belarusian company kind of concluded from the code was they didn't want whoever built this worm didn't want this to be evident that a virus did the damage. 17:18 They wanted the people at the Natanz facility to think that their calculations were wrong. Yeah, that they were making some sort of mistake. Not that they were destroying something. And so what is very strange... Which is just gaslighting. Yeah, it'd actually be more fun if we convinced the scientists that they're a little wrong. 17:38 Thanks for watching our show. you like it, a great way to help out is by being a Patreon supporter. 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But if not, right back to the episode, right? 18:30 It's like it's anonymous with their little masks in their warehouse somewhere and they're wait wait wait make it slower to take down your scientists by making them 18:46 insecure feel like they're really bad persons. Oh, you don't know how to say you're on the machine. The machine were just a case. She's like I'm over. She would occasionally say I ran and so they'd be like am I saying it wrong? Are you said? Did you say Iran? I ran? I've grown up here and I don't. said I ran like I'm saying a nuclear program. 19:14 They have nuclear. Did I say nuclear weird nuclear? What did I say? You said nuclear is nuclear 19:28 I that you knew that all you had to do was say nuclear weird and I would immediately think that oh I said nuclear weird and then now you're saying it the same way both times. First of all, I did not say the same all times all right. I hate so much that this is working on me. I need so much that so under my skin, nothing in the data shows that you're can't hear this out. Tim's for you, it's firing on all cylinders and 19:59 Tim's... there's no readings for this. We have no data that shows where he's broken. Reset, reset, reset! 20:09 you're doing exactly what my baby does. Call your like so you have experiences. You don't go to the gym, but when I go to the gym and I'm pressing dumb bells two hundred pounds and so freaking it's jamming my hand into the button on my watch so bad. Well, it's not even that it hurts. It's that my watch starts doing the thing where it's like SOS doing and I'm like you're like a frick. No, that 20:37 almost the exact same thing happens, but I'll be changing my son's diaper and like you're holding his legs and like doing the right goes and he sees the screen and he just starts tapping it and ah he can't. I can't your kid is already an iPad baby and your wife doesn't want him to look at screens, but then she didn't account for your apple watch and he gets and he's addicted to your apple watch. He's like he really does like reach at it like hit it and do stuff with it and like he's not 21:05 he's not aware. Oh yeah, my kids screen time. I just let him look at my apple watch a little bit. Look at my watch and it drives me crazy because I'm so stressed that he's gonna like call like a client or something. I'm like oh hey, sorry, I'm changing my son's diaper. That was him. I can't hang up. You're gonna have to do it. My answer full of poop. 21:25 My hands are full of poop and my shoes are full of pee! 21:36 so the Belarusian company just like they were they were very. They were telling Iran. Hey, this code looks like it's just designed to mess with your scientists. Well, that's exactly what this I mean close to what they said. Yeah, I know they said what's strange. What's strange is there's this one side of it that is like very surgical, very precise. We're going to sneak in essentially and like trick you into thinking everything and but then there's this other side of the system. Yeah, 22:06 And the other side of the system is just going to the centrifuges and just revving up the RPMs as high as they can to like blow up the centrifuges. Okay. So like that's very less surgical. Like they're just like, okay, what if we do this thing? But then what if also we just go maxed out? Yeah. Right. And so over the course of a few years, this system is this virus is running wild inside the Natanz nuclear facility. What do you got under the table? What are you doing? Okay. 22:35 this is running wild. This is this running wild in the tons and stop that stop doing that stop doing what? Oh my God. Okay, so stop to it. No, that was genuine. Stop doing what I don't know. You just freaking me out. Just guys, I go look at the time, stay with the video for this feels like you're going to do something. I really just feels like you're I opened the coke zero. I took a sip and then I looked at Alex and he's over here like freaking quick 23:06 quit doing that bro. I would not have done that. I that or on joke. If I knew that it was going to crash you out like this dude, I don't know why it did it just really hey. I'm really sorry. Do you want to reset? You want to start over? No, okay, good so hey man, so 23:27 I used to run at this time in my life. Just so you know, I was running an online forum called Ninja, nerd, assassins of malware, where we would help people solve their computer problems through an online forum. This is real yeah yeah. I don't I'm worried that that's still out there. I guess it's probably not for sure. Let's check yeah Ninja nerd. Well, now it's owned by somebody else, an engineer dot org, somebody bought it 23:56 No, I mean I didn't own the dot org for it, but this is online learning platform for medicine and science stupid, an engineer does also. I don't feel like that branding works for that like concept wow. Okay, so it's this is crazy that this still exists. This is my logo. I'm not going to give anyone the I'm not going to give anybody the I mean it's falling apart, but do see the 24:27 Oh, was this photo bucket? No, this was a but look, ninja nerd, assassins of malware. That's crazy and then yeah, you could. I mean all the like all the other bridges are dead because yeah yeah yeah. I used links for these images. Oh yeah yeah, but that's crazy that that's still that's pretty wild. Some of our patrons will find that this is a challenge and for those of you, there's a couple of you that I'm thinking of that. I think are going to find it 24:56 you know who you are. That's crazy. I guess I could try to log in and see if the things posted there. It would be hilarious if that becomes your website like jaronmyers dot com just links to that and that's where you just ninja nerf. Should I bring back online forums shy, my forum or sick? I mean that's basically what our that's kind of what our discord is honestly though. Like if you think about it, 25:20 what's that? What's that mailing list thing that's really big right now? I'm drawing a blank on its name, sub stack, sub stack, yes, sub stack is like we're taking a step towards that. I mean I've thought about writing more because I would like to do a book one day, just a memoir about my time in the N B A and pretty funny about how you know why I mean that's just a novel. oh 25:51 I'm freaking right a novel about his life in a novel, a lies is life. Yeah, no, but I thought about starting a sub stack. I don't know. I just I miss I would log in every day and I would see like oh, I've got like eight messages like eight responses to my comments and honestly I really loved. I don't know what this was. I have talked about on the show before too, because I helped with the support team for the forum itself and so like I just liked I had templates saved yeah. 26:19 first like somebody asked how to do this and I would just click that template and respond. I liked how that was people. That was an interesting era of the internet because things could just be found like you didn't have to have a budget, a marketing budget to get yourself on the first page of good right like you could just be out there and people could find it and there were and I had like friends who I'm sure were just fifty eight year old dudes. Yeah, you know yeah and we were told in your address and I was like here's my address. Here's my phone number yeah yeah and that's anyway. That's crazy 26:48 Yeah, that's crazy. I don't know who messaged me on Rune scape the other day, but I saw the message and then I was on my phone playing so I couldn't respond to you, but know that I saw that message because someone messaged me and just said. Do you pray? That's why I text you and that's so fun. ah So whoever that was, thanks for doing that. I've been out here playing. He's been clicking the 27:11 No, I'm fishing right now. I'm fishing and cooking. I was I was clicking the crab, clicking the crab, I can and then there was a giant crab that I was really complicated stuff. You wouldn't get out and you wouldn't you wouldn't say you were for like a week. He would click. Literally all he did was click on a crab. That was the game. He would click on a crab every few minutes and that was the game he was playing for like a week and a half, but you got like very high level for it. 27:37 Sorry, you can just screen time. Sorry, I would take this to my watch. 27:46 No, I would set a timer. You can attack the crab and then every ten minutes the crab dies and you got to attack it again and so would just I would be working and I would go set a nine and a half minute timer and then I would do the work and it would go off and I would wait like you know and I'd click the new crab that would pop up and I would just go back to work and you're a judge me for that he's clicking the crab whatever do whatever I don't care. 28:12 I'm under his skin. I'm under his skin. That is Mario. So anyway, ninja nerd, so that Costco dog is my user name on runescape on runescape by the way. So for years yeah this the engineers at this facility were like we can't figure out what's going on here okay and eventually years yeah for years. When did they first discover it? Two thousand ten two thousand ten they brought it to this company to be like we think this might be a virus okay. 28:41 um and so that's when but do we know when they discovered it two thousand ten? So they found it in two thousand ten and they said we think that there might be a virus in this system and then four years after no they found in two thousand ten, but four years before that it had been wreaking havoc. Oh God, it okay. Okay, so for four years it's been wreaking havoc. Yes, they've had this virus for four years yeah and they'd just recently figured out God. They went to this company in Belarus and said hey, can you figure out what's going on here um and so 29:12 The what's really interesting about this is they were in what's they they had what's called an air gap in cyber security where it sounds like what it is. You have a gap of air between you and your system right and like you're not connected to the internet and in the case of this facility this facility was an underground facility and it was in the middle of the desert where literally there was not an electronic device for miles from this facility and so there was no way to get a virus 29:42 into this facility without physically walking into this facility. Okay, and so there's a few theories about how this happened uh and it's hard to pin down for sure what is true. What I think is probably likely is I think that there was two versions of this that got into the facility based on the stories that are out there. The first story that you hear in the story that were circulated pretty widely early in the like the when this hit the public right was it was a usb stick right 30:11 right, right, and so somebody somewhere got a usb stick that was infected and they didn't really know they plugged it in and it infected the system and that's what's really interesting like early computer viruses and ah they worked this way. They were floppy disks and cd roms and yeah and usbs that had a virus on it and you didn't know that they had it and you just put it in ah and then I think that's how I got a virus was I had it well because I had a usb stick 30:41 and that was great man. That's bringing in so many memories. I had I had a whole like uh like a travel case yeah of USBs yeah that one was like you know actual homework and stuff and then I had another one that was like all the software that I used to get viruses off of computers yeah, so I could get it off my friend's computer. If it's a go, let me plug this in and do it and then I had another one that was a uh Nintendo emulator yeah that had every Nintendo game 31:10 ever made on it. That's cool and then I had another one that was just my music and I literally I had the USP port in my pickup truck and I would plug it so I would just have a USP stick sticking straight out from my radio and that's how I listen to music in my car. Yeah, that's sick. That's crazy. Yeah, you know, I'm thinking a lot about lately what I I don't know what it is about being a thirty year old person. I'm thirty one uh 31:37 but like do you ever have the urge to just buy a Ford Ranger like an old for yeah, you know, like I was worse. Listen, I don't talk about like old. I'm talking about like a two thousand one. You know, like yeah, they were they were very cool trucks. I mean or like you know, buying like a uh old for what for an f one fifty or like an old chevy like of course you everyone wants to buy like a an eighties pickup truck right yeah. 32:07 like a two thousand two for Ranger, you know yeah. Those four Rangers were dealt though they had the sideways seats in the back, so you could stare at the other pass. That's what I'm saying. We've talked about on the podcast for sure. Yeah, I that. I love that so much so you can touch knees. Yeah, you can. Let's touch knees. She's the back. My for I don't think it was a let's touch knees. That's the ease of the back of my friends for a 32:30 hey, do you want to touch knees in the back of my friends Ford Ranger? Yeah, and then you get back there and there's like all these dummies that he's dressed up. I know, but I thought like thing. I kind of want like an old pick up. I mean they are like they're there. Maybe it's the nostalgia for like having like literally my old truck. You know, I think there. I think that's part of it. I think I think it does take you back to a simpler time. Yeah, also like those trucks were so much more practical. They had 33:00 much larger truck bed and like they were just cool. They were so cool. Yeah, they really were so busy. The bench seat dude being able to like I mean come on man. Yeah, you know being a yeah, I know exactly what you're going to prom. You got your arm around a girl. There's no seat belts. You got a red. No seat belt. Yeah. 33:23 but it's okay. It's a bit of a school to prom with the girl you wanted to go to prom with your days in the hospital, but like you shot survive. She survived the prom. You stitches in your chair and you're like yeah, she's in the hospital. The girl you wanted to go to her seat belt. I did though did so. I just got some glass in my jaw, so 33:50 yeah, the girl you wanted to go with feels bad for you and says okay, I'll ditch my date and I'll dance with you. Oh, that involves her ditching her date too. Yeah, she's like I he got no car. know what's crazy. He got into a car accident the way here. The breaks did work. God, that's that's crazy. I was crazy. I don't know how to have them. I don't understand how that's very weird. Do you want to go touch the back of my friends for Ranger 34:19 uh I mostly a stall for where we were in high school, but you know that's crazy. I didn't have the extended cab either. My parents weren't like the reason my parents got me a pickup truck. I think it was smart because they were like you can only have two people in here max yeah. That's that was smart on them. My parents gave me a pickup truck, but it was more of just like there wasn't like it was a hand me down truck. Yeah, it's kind of easy to buy some pickup truck yeah yeah yeah. uh 34:47 it's kind of like I think never mind. We don't need to talk about these trucks anymore, so the other theory about how this got in there. Sorry yeah, we don't have a time left the other theory about how this little off the other. Sorry, we would be a stall. There was there was this Dutch engineer yeah. He's thirty six year old, thirty six years old. His name is Eric van Sabin okay and Eric worked for like a heavy transport logistics company, yet supplied 35:16 parts and different things for heavy machinery like facilities that had heavy machinery and he as a spy movie where someone has a virus on the US be right now. Yeah, I'm trying to break into the facility and then they're trying to find a computer that has a USP port still, but there's no USP's in this building. What are you talking about? Just plug it into the computer where 35:43 where do I pull and use his laptops and take some home? Yeah, there's nothing. There's nothing on this computer is all just the iPad airs, iPod airs, and then he plugs it in and it comes and it's his it's his Nintendo and emulator and he's like I grab the wrong uh 35:59 I killed 10 people on the way in here to put this Nintendo game on this theater. 36:08 I'm gonna beat it real quick. ah 36:24 I hate losing. He's more mad. Okay, anyway. 36:34 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things. I learned last night. If you liked the show, you want to support us, we've got merchandise that you can get and it's good stylish stuff that I made. put a lot of work into this stuff, so it's great to find other tilling fans in the wild and be like, wait a minute. I know that shirt. And so yeah, we would love for you to do that. You can pop over to shop.tillin.com or the QR code or there's a link in the description. There's plenty of ways to find it. We promise we made it super easy. So thanks for supporting the show and thanks for listening. 37:04 he is a he has a this come here. He works for this company okay, and they get a contract to supply water pumps to the Natanz station. Okay, he gets a call from the Dutch government and the Dutch government says hey while you're there, they say I've ever thought about being a spy and so he uh agrees and they basically like he takes the water pumps to the Dutch version of the CIA. 37:34 and they install some software on the water pumps and he doesn't really know what's going on. He brings those water pumps to Iran. uh Iran. And he goes there and what's interesting, his wife grew up there and so her whole family lives out there. oh So they make a trip out of it. They go there. They're spending like New Year's with her family. He goes, he does the installation and something scares him while he's there. 38:04 like he almost figures out what's going on. I don't know if he knew from the start. It's it's not clear how much he was aware of figures out what's going on is in like oh they've got nukes. I don't know if it's they got nukes, but there's something about his time there where he goes and he does the installation okay and he comes home and he's like we're leaving right now and he's like we need to leave the country. We gotta get out of here. We gotta get out and there's no clear evidence of what exactly happened like if he figures something out or if he said something he shouldn't have, but he leaves the country. 38:32 Okay, this was late two thousand eight going into two thousand nine like because of like a new year's event. They were sure they go home and what's really interesting is later that same month in January two thousand nine he's in Dubai and he's riding his motorcycle when all of a sudden he's involved in a crash. That's a single vehicle crash where he breaks his neck and he dies and investigators claim that there's no sign of foul play. Okay, but the theory 39:02 is that someone sabotage his bike because they found his connection to something. I always do bits at really unfortunate times because we just talked about cutting the brakes on someone's Ford Ranger and then you're like yeah, someone sabotage his bike. Okay, and what's interesting is there was an anonymous source in the Intel Intelligence Committee at like the Dutch, the Dutch Intelligence Agency. Yeah, 39:32 and they said he paid a touch is where do is land. 39:41 think it's Germany. Is it Germany? The Netherlands. you. Yeah. So oh the other, the Dutch, but they said he paid a high price. ah So they seem to know like it, what it seems like is he knew too much about what he was saying, what he was doing and he talked about it because it wasn't even a year later that 40:09 the Pete the engineers from around speaking to the Dutch when I was in Italy. Did I tell you about the guys I was on the the Pompeii tour with that they were they were professional theater actors. Well, one was a producer and the other one was the actor and you know the little fella. uh He plays Olaf in the German version of interesting yeah. 40:39 have we talked? We talk about that, so I think we didn't talk about that because like he plays Olaf in like the official version of frozen that tours all over the Netherlands and Germany and all that like it's like the broadway version, whatever their broadway is yeah broadway or whatever the HADER, they call it to broad V, broad V, so yeah. 41:07 interest, but also all the names in frozen are German, so it's like if you're watching frozen in German, it's a lot like if you watched if they change all the names and frozen to be like Matt, yeah, they're just it's like Anna and Elsa and it's just like that's just a normal Brittany. 41:28 Yeah, that is Claus Chris. Yeah, that is it. It feels different off. 41:37 Ola, so they so I pretty sure that's pronounced so. 41:47 so they something happens while he's installing that yeah to be some people get wind of what's going on. Okay, I think the assumption is that they then spend some time trying to source whatever was going on. They couldn't figure it out. They take it to this bar region company, okay, a little over a year later, the original company spends a few months with it trying to so did Iran figure out that it was the Dutch that did that well. It's funny. You should ask well because like even if they didn't install the virus, 42:17 Iran's probably like yeah, you may not install the virus, but we know that you put something in our water pumps. That's weird. What you put in our water pumps? uh So here's what's interesting. The the company from Belarus, they go public with this story and they by this time was really interesting. It's sucks. Next got out. It's not clear how that happened, whether it was someone when they were putting it in the water pumps or something else or some of that USB stick left the facility and ended up spreading 42:46 but now this is infected like thousands of machines around the world. Okay, but it's very clearly built for this one machine in the Natanz nuclear facility. Sure, so they go public with this kind of sharing the story and a bunch of people like start researching it, trying to figure it out. Long story short, the most likely scenario that has been painted there is there has never been an official acknowledgement of this. 43:15 But through like the connecting of lines, like a crazy conspiracy theorist, this has been able to be traced back most likely to the 2006 Operation Olympic Games, which was put together by George W. Bush uh in, was going say, this sounds like an American thing, which was in collaboration with the state of Israel uh to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Yeah. 43:45 And they had a CULAR. They. 43:50 Say it again. Nuclear. Thank you. uh They identified this facility, but this facility was underground. They knew they could only hit it with heavy bunker buster missiles. Yeah. They did not want to go in with a hot war. They theorized that they could get in with a computer virus. And so this is really the first large scale state to state computer virus that was like inactive war because they essentially bombed the facility. 44:18 from a computer virus right because over the course of the few years that I was in there. How do they? How did the Dutch storyline get blamed for this? Well, I can I can bring that in okay, but over the course of the few years that this system was wreaking havoc. They destroyed George Bush and Israel planted a virus in Iran to take out their nukes allegedly. There's never been an official acknowledgement, but that's very strongly what it looks like. There was 44:48 there was a lot of stuff that it looks like George did. There was a high ranking military official around the time that this was beginning, ah who said, Oh, don't worry, we are taking care of the Iran nuclear capabilities. uh That's not an acknowledgement, right, but with a lot of the other symbols that we have pointing back to them, it does look like they were the ones who did this and also experts in the field have come to this code and they do think that this took 45:17 billions of dollars worth of investment to be able to build this because this appears like you can kind of, as you source through it, you can kind of see years of work as you build out the layers. And so they're like, we think that they were working on this since at the latest point, 1998, and that where they started developing this software. And so there was a point where this computer virus was transformed into this purpose by George Bush in the mid two thousands. And then, uh, 45:47 The deployment is what's really interesting is the official story we heard for a long time or the official theory we heard for a long time was the USB thing, which is possible. it does make a little bit of sense because you could very easily through social coercion or through coming into contact with someone who worked at the facility, find a way to swap USB sticks or something like that, get access to that and be able to do that without ever being caught. 46:17 And that early phase was where you, kind of photograph the system, deploy the fake data, slowly work through the system. Sure. Later, all of a sudden it ramped up and it was moving much quicker. And so what it looks like is there was a slow version to this where it's like, let's move slowly. Let's make sure we don't get caught. Let's cover our tracks. Right. And then that wasn't working fast enough. And what the thought is, is that the U S or somebody within the U S said, make it go faster. 46:45 and so that's that he said like that or he said like make it go fast, probably like make it go faster, probably like that. Now watch this dry now watch this USB dry uh and so then then that's when they were like okay, we got to get it in there, but there's no chance a 47:08 American or Israeli spy is going to get into that facility right like there's no way we even our best spies. They're not going to be able to work their way in there. We need a third party and so that's when they called on the Netherlands and they said hey, you got anyone. I made that up. They called on Deutschland and they said hey, you got anyone who can get into the Iran Natanz facility. 47:36 and they said, let us do some digging. They were, said where 47:41 the Iran Natanz facility or on or on. Oh, you mean or on? Oh, you mean Olaf Olaf, but America, as they said, let us do some digging and that's when they looped in this other guy and so this other guy very much looked like he was a private citizen yeah who the the but that's what I was saying. I think I said that a couple episodes ago about spies is that do we know that he knew that stuff was on there? I don't know if I he was a spy. I was going to say I think the easiest way to do that is like 48:10 hey he's installing his water pumps. Let's put something in the water pumps, but he has not to know that yeah. I think he knew that because I think he knew what was going on. I think that's why he was like we gotta get out of here. I think that was a crucial mistake. I knew too much and that's what I'm saying is that like you like. I think the most effective spies that are spying today don't know that they're spies. Yeah, they have no idea that they're a part of it. Yeah, they're yeah, so that's when 48:36 this new system got installed and then things ramped up to a hundred right. uh But over the course of those few years over a thousand centrifuges were were damaged. And so there are debates on how far this pushed back the nuclear program there. Some say as much as three or four years. Some say as little as six months. uh It's very contested on how much damage was actually done there. But this was the first case of a state to state. Well, 49:04 allegedly a state to state actor who damaged physically damaged something right through a vice software. Yeah, and so this is really the first uh actual uh obvious cyber warfare in history and it opened up kind of a Pandora's box to say oh hey, this is possible. Yeah, this is something that's worth taking public investment into. So what we do know is when President Obama was inaugurated, ah this was something between 49:34 ah presidencies that they passed a baton and they said, keep this operation going because there's something valuable here. ah And it very much looks like new versions of Stuxnet had been developed under Obama's presidency and used in different applications. Nothing as consequential as this program, but there were situations where it looked like it had been deployed. ah And since then there have been multiple other computer viruses from other different states. 50:04 to attack different systems. So Stuxnet is kind of like the Manhattan project of your computer. 50:15 and I probably could have got it off there. If they had just gone to my form to me as a sophomore in high school, if they just gone to ninja nerd, I could have helped them figure that out. You know one of those fifty three year old your assassins of malware. I had a lot of time. I didn't have a girlfriend, so I couldn't figure out why either. I the tuba and I was an assassin of malware. 50:37 I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a girlfriend. All I wanted to talk about was sheet music and lines of oh malware viruses. Look at this virus. Did you upgrade your computer to Windows Vista or you still an XP? That's cool. Do you want to touch knees in the back of my ford? Have I told this story the podcast to about the number of there were several girls because I had a Ford pickup truck and then I would 51:07 lay out a blanket and we would just lay in the back of that pickup truck and look at the stars. Have we talked about that before yeah, no and then we I didn't even kiss him. We just looked. I think that now I realize that girl wanted me to kiss her yeah. That was the expectation that was the expectation now and then I dropped her off and she was like does he not is like me he's not interested and I was like that was the greatest date in the whole world. I can't wait to marry that girl. I remember I remember 51:36 and stuff like that too. You're like yeah, and then you look back and you're like she wanted to kiss yeah, because wow, have we talked about on the podcast that every date I ever took to dance. just ditched at the dance and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like I brought him yeah I brought it. We're here. Oh you guys got a car accident on the way, so you're free to dance. Let's dance later. Later, I'm going to dance with that. I brought him. I brought him. We're hey hey you're going fit off there. 52:05 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things are learned last night. If you enjoyed that and you want another episode that has to with computer viruses, we talk about John McCaffey, the guy who made McCaffey anti virus and also the insane life that he lived that led him to live living on a compound and like hiding out crazy. What a crazy psycho guy yeah, but you can check that out and if you want next week's episode right now, you can join us on Patreon. You can get that. You can get all of our episodes ad free and you can get next week's right now and we would love to see over there. Thanks for supporting the show. Yeah, anything else you want to say to him 52:35 I just see an ex. Is there anything you want to say? I was just gonna say like they be careful when you watch that episode because he's dead now. 52:48 Yeah, okay, we'll see it. Be careful. Why are they gonna be careful? You think he's he got on to we were we were we were he was alive when we did it. Oh, maybe I don't even know now, so now you're dishonoring the dead. If you laugh, we were that's