Podcast
Can Computer Hackers Get Inside Your Mind?
Planet Money
- The Tattoo That Started A Cyber Investigation
- Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade found a leaked NSA malware list with one mysterious entry labeled Fast 16 saying nothing to see here carry on.
- He became obsessed, tattooed the label on his arm, and began reverse engineering fragments like a cyber paleontologist to uncover its purpose. (Time 0:01:24)
- Stuxnet Redefined Cyber Sabotage
- Stuxnet proved cyber sabotage can cause physical destruction by manipulating control systems, redefining what’s possible in cyber warfare.
- It reportedly damaged Iran’s centrifuges by faking normal readings while making them spin erratically, destroying about a fifth of them. (Time 0:08:22)
- Use AI To Break Cold Cyber Mysteries
- Use modern AI and multiple expert checks to speed reverse engineering of old malware when manual analysis stalls.
- Vitaly ran the reverse engineering, then used AI models to double- and triple-check findings before alerting Jags. (Time 0:11:30)
- Malware That Messes With Math
- Fast 16 targeted high-precision floating point math inside scientific software, a rare and surprising focus for malware.
- Researchers found it altered calculation bytes so detailed simulations would return subtly wrong results. (Time 0:14:30)
- Finding LS-Dyna In The Malware’s Fingerprint
- Jags and Vitaly scanned old software for specific six-byte patterns and linked them to LS-Dyna, a niche physics modeling tool used for complex simulations.
- The Institute for Science and International Security had noted Iranian researchers using LS-Dyna for explosive and pressure calculations relevant to nuclear work. (Time 0:17:00)
- Epistemological Warfare Against Scientists
- Fast 16 lay dormant until LS-Dyna ran specific nuclear pressure simulations, then flipped calculation bytes to produce identical wrong answers across machines.
- It propagated to other computers so scientists would repeatedly get the same wrong result and doubt their own work. (Time 0:20:22)
- Attribution Limits And Historical Impact
- Researchers can’t definitively attribute Fast 16 to the U.S. or Israel, but its era, method, and target closely mirror known operations against Iran’s nuclear program.
- Deployment remains plausible and may have influenced nuclear timelines, but the historical impact is uncertain. (Time 0:22:41)
- Skeptical Experts See Systems As Fragile
- Experts who build and study systems are also some of the most skeptical about trusting them, aware of how subtle attacks can erode certainty.
- Jags and Vitaly note driverless trains and other automated systems are precisely the types of targets such epistemological attacks could degrade. (Time 0:26:48)