In December 2024, two events —drone sightings in the US and Israel’s strike on Syria’s weapon depots— were followed by orchestrated reports of detected radiation spikes. Some media outlets took these dubious reports (with millions of views) that originated from social media , and published pieces based on them. In one of these cases, the actors behind the disinformation campaign exploited a real-time radiation map, which is maintained by a private company that manufactures personal dosimeters, to sustain the narrative. Kim Zetter has recently published " Anatomy of a Nuclear Scare ", an article that covers this issue. This trend does not come as a surprise, as radioactivity is one of those few things that can collectively trigger significant levels of societal anxiety and emotional, rather than rational, response, which is often disproportionate to the actual physical risks it poses. This radiation fear has been shaped during years by a mix of cultural, historical, and media...
A year ago, shortly after presenting the Chernobyl research , I was kind of surprised to find out that a plethora of brand-new Teleperm XS (2nd generation) components were available on eBay. Framatome’s Teleperm XS (TXS) is a digital Instrumentation & Control platform designed specifically for use in safety systems in Nuclear power plants, as a replacement for, or upgrades to their analog counterparts. It is one of the most widely used digital safety I&C platforms, sustaining the main defense line (Reactor Protection System, Engineered Safety Features Actuation System) in dozens of nuclear reactors globally, including Europe, USA, Russia, and China. Obviously, that was a good opportunity to dig deeper into the, usually, closed world of nuclear digital safety I&C systems, so I bought some of the most important TXS modules. That was the starting point for the research I'm releasing today: " A Practical Analysis of Cyber-Physical Attacks Against Nuclear ...