Here Comes Autumn

It is the end of Syawal of the Muslim's month in the lunar calendar. It is also the changing of season, opening the door to winter.
Here at the place where I lived in Taif, the seasons starts off with the picking of grapes and pomegranates.
Everyday the locals picks up the fruits and sell them to the Capital city.
The small green grapes are dried under the sun to become raisin, which later on becomes filling of local breads. While the bigger shining excellent condition are packed and deliver to the customer around Saudi.
While pomegranate fruits are ruby red with small sizes sparkling ruby color sweet inside. In my home country we use to call it "buah delima". Pomegranates are Iran and Himalayan origin brought by the traders along the silk trade route to Saudi. It is a good source of vitamin C and the Sauds loves it. The pomegranate fruit is usually eaten as salad along with grapes and mayonnaise.

Stuxnet Virus Targeted at Iran

A very malicious virus has spread through out network industrial computer in resent days. The virus itself is a refined trojan know as Stuxnet. Some speculated that the virus is specially made and targeted at Iran especially for its nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

The Stuxnet "Trojan worm" was designed to attack industrial control systems produced by Siemen's AG, which are commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities.
According to Symantec, 60% infected world wide is in Iran and some in Pakistan, India and now Indonesia.
It spreads from USB devices and exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system specially the unlicensed. Once the worm infects a system, it sets up communications with a remote server computer that can be used to steal data or take control of the system.
Speculation are targeted at Israel which admitted earlier to have the capability to lunch a cyber attack to Iran. Also the US which at odd with Iran's nuclear capability.
Fred Burton, a former US counter terrorism agent and vice-president of risk consultancy Stratfor, said he suspected Stuxnet was a covert action on the part of a nation state intelligence service in an effort to disrupt Iranian military or nuclear efforts.
Some experts also commented that search term in the internet about Stuxnet lead to boobytraped sites with Stuxnet virus. So be aware.
Now Siemen is offering free assistance site for downloading the antivirus.
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