Erik van Sabben

Erik van Sabben   (Engineer, Spook, hacker)
Born	Erik van Sabben 31 January 1972 Vlissingen, Netherlands
Died	January 16, 2009 (Age 36) Dhait, UAE
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	HTS Tilburg
Victim of	Assassination?
Interests	Iran/Nuclear weapons
Engineer-recruited-spook that was responsible for installing Stuxnet in Iranian nuclear facilities. Found death 2 weeks later in a "motorcycle accident"  Engineer  In office - 2007 Employer TTS Dubai,  Al-Jaber Group  Spook  In office 2005 - 2009 Employer AIVD

Erik van Sabben was "a well known" Dutch engineer and spook. De Volksrant and journalist Huib Modderkolk write that Van Sabben was a spook recruited in a 2005 "off-the-books" billion-dollar operation by the Dutch intelligence agencies AIVD and MIVD on the order of the CIA and Mossad, to hack a nuclear facility in Iran with computer virus Stuxnet in 2007. Van Sabben died in a suspicious motor cycle "accident" in Dubai two weeks after the infiltration undercover operation had been successfully concluded. An AIVD officer later admitted on the promise of secrecy in 2024 that -- although the official local investigation ruled the single-bike accident "his own fault" -- van Sabben was assassinated and "paid a high price".

Early life

Stuxnet - the malware the US and Israel created to disable Iran’s nuclear program - has been credited with bringing the world into the age of cyberwar. But how did that malware get into Natanz nuclear facility, one of the most protected places on Earth? Here’s the story of Erik van Sabben, the Dutch spy without whom Stuxnet would not have been possible - Cybernews.

Van Sabben completed a course from a technical school in Tilburg. As undergraduate he went to Dubai. He then moved to Dubai immediately and started working for Dutch multinational Mammoet and was assigned to Abu Dhabi for a brief period. Van Sabben worked on the assembly of pedestrian bridges for the Dubai Metro. He briefly worked for Jumbo Shipping in the 2000s in Rotterdam harbour. He travelled a tremendous amount between Sudan, Yemen, Iran and East Africa while coming home to visit his kids from his first marriage. Earlier in his career he was involved in the installation of Abu Dhabi's Maqta Bridge.

“To his family members, it is still a mystery: Dutchman Erik van Sabben leaves for ten days in late 2008 for the Iranian capital of Tehran. The 36-year-old engineer - a fearless adventurer who is not afraid to take risks and works in Dubai for a heavy transport company - is going with his Iranian wife to visit her family. It should be a festive end to the year. But after just one day, Van Sabben, used to working in stressful situations and under high pressure, wants to leave Iran. He seems panicked. Why the engineer wants to leave the country, he cannot say. His Dutch mother says of it fifteen years later, “We all thought it was very strange. His Iranian wife: “He was so upset and insisted that we leave immediately. What his immediate family and wife do not know: Van Sabben carries a secret with him. He leads a double life. Research by the Volkskrant, in which over a period of two years 43 people were spoken to, 19 of whom were from the intelligence services AIVD and MIVD, shows that Van Sabben was recruited by the Dutch secret service.”
Huib Modderkolk (2017) 

Van Sabben married an Iranian woman before the 2000s. His role at transportation firm TTS Dubai enabled him according to colleagues to "import specialized western devices". TTS Dubai was known by former AIVD and Mossad spooks to import computer hardware to Iran. An old Dutch director of the firm, Peter Knaap, remarked TTS to be doing "banned transactions already banned for years". The company was noted to supply hardware for oil and gas companies in Iran. Van Sabben was noted to be "capable of performing and installing Stuxnet as an adventurous traveller" by Knaap. Knaap denied to have known anything about anything Van Sabben was doing from 2005 onwards.

According to ex CIA senior officer James Lawler, the Dutch agencies were asked to perform this part of the operation as "they had enough smart engineers", not explaining why nobody within the CIA and Mossad - the two entities developing the plan and virus - was found able to perform the installation. According to the newspaper, only Van Sabben's identity was known, but as AIVD officer used a need-to-know-basis, Van Sabben was suspected to possibly use an Iranian passport, along with a false name. Other officers also suspected Van Sabben was working directly for the Mossad in another operation as well, but De Volkskrant couldn't investigate more as only his regularly made trips for Israel were noted in documents, and other details could not be found.

Stuxnet

Train GRC Academy - Stuxnet explained in 3 minutes.

Full article: Stuxnet

Full article: Nuclear power plant

A Dutch intelligence officer was noted in De Volkskrant to have remarked the Americans "refused to tell the Dutch that Van Sabben was supposed to install Stuxnet, in fact, nobody knew that it was Van Sabben that transported the Stuxnet virus". A FOIA request on Dutch soil to the Dutch government came back with the same conclusion; the AIVD commented to the newspaper that "the chain of proof had gaps" in a intern investigation in 2019. The CIA and the AIVD never admitted which part of the story that officers leaked was correct; Van Sabben reportedly brought the virus with a USB-stick and installed it in the network of the Nuclear facility of the Iranian government in Natanz, but according to another officer the virus was brought into the underground nuclear power plant by supplying a water pump with Van Sabben's front company. Van Sabben has never written a will and written reports were kept secret, resulting in nobody knowing if even Van Sabben himself knew that his supplies that he transported included a new highly advanced computer virus. He was only told he was suppose to help sabotage Iran's nuclear program. The virus resulted in a crash of ~900-1000 of nuclear centrifuges in the facility, delaying Iran's nuclear programs at the time by "at least several years", according to the Institute for Science and International Security

Secrecy

Newspaper De Volkskrant noted that then Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende refused to comment on anything regarding the operation. Further research revealed the AIVD kept him and Dutch congress completely in the dark, with officers explaining to not have told him the details of the operation to avoid him being publicly scrutinized. The Dutch minister for internal affairs (deep state operative Guusje ter Horst} and the Dutch parliamentary intelligence commission that was suppose to be informed and was only made up of the biggest Dutch parties was also kept in the dark, a violation of Dutch law that prohibits the AIVD and MIVD to choose to not inform at least 2 ministers.

Death

2 weeks after the operation, Van Sabben died in a single-bike accident, crashing his bike and couldn't be stabilized following fatal injuries in Dubai. The AIVD and MIVD files lack an end date to the operation Van Sabben was in, making it not possible to pin point a direct suspect to potential foul play. Interesting to note is that a few months later, a new version of the Stuxnet worm had been made that didn't have to be installed on location, making Van Sabben's position possibly useless. The new version was brought back into the computers of the nuclear facility after the one by Van Sabben had been "detected relatively quickly", with De Volkskrant noting "The US and Israel took the risk with this new infection method of detection in dozens of other computers and possibly making Stuxnet known to the general public". This may possibly be a hint in pointing to any foul play accusations into the death of Van Sabben. The new infection method of Stuxnet was discovered and soon patched by a Russian cybersecurity company "VirusBlokAda".

Wikipedia

As of 2024, van Sabben still lacked a Dutch Wikipedia page. He is mentioned on the Dutch and English Stuxnet page.

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