‘Thunderstruck’: How AC/DC hijacked Iran’s nuclear facilities
It’s often discussed how there were plenty of questions asked as to whether AC/DC would be able to have the same impact as a group after the untimely passing of lead vocalist Bon Scott in 1980. They’d rapidly risen from their humble beginnings as a group that only released their first couple of albums in Australia and New Zealand to become one of the biggest hard rock bands in the world in under a decade, and having to replace their frontman at the peak of their career was not something that they would ever expect to have to do.
However, they managed to overcome this with the release of their biggest-selling album, Back In Black, which saw former Geordie vocalist Brian Johnson take the position of lead vocalist, and he slipped in without any immediate hiccups taking place. He was the ideal replacement for Scott, something that the former frontman himself knew prior to his death, having praised Johnson’s style for many years.
They’d somehow managed to rescue themselves from the brink of collapse and eclipsed their previous achievements, and the follow-up album, For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), was a continuation of this success. Despite this, the three subsequent albums saw AC/DC experience a downward trend, and they were all met with a more lukewarm reception that indicated their time in the spotlight was withering away.
In order to salvage their career from falling apart, the band needed to pull out all the stops on their 1990 album, The Razors Edge, and with a handful of singles that appeared to capture the same level of venom that had been present on their earlier material, they managed to reach the same highs as they had done back in their heyday. While ‘Are You Ready’ and ‘Moneytalks’ captured AC/DC at close to their best, the most impactful track from the album was ‘Thunderstruck’, a track that rapidly became one of their best-selling singles ever.
Capturing the true spirit of hard rock energy, the song became a staple of their live performances and was used in several blockbuster films, but the impact that they might not have expected the song to have was that it was also used for far more nefarious purposes. In 2012, an attack on Iran’s nuclear programme saw a computer virus take control of the devices used by scientists associated with the programme, and one of the payloads that came with the worm was that it would play ‘Thunderstruck’ at maximum volume.
A Finnish cybersecurity experct, Mikko Hypponen, declared after the incident that he had received an email from someone associated with Iran’s nuclear programme that “there was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out,” before confirming the association with the Australian rock group. “I believe it was playing ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC.”
While the impact of the track saw AC/DC reach the dizzying heights of their previous success, the song most likely doesn’t have the same appeal in Iran, where many people probably still associate the song with deafening blasts of guitar and having to prevent nuclear disaster. Still, the intention of the band was probably to have it played at maximum volume anyway, so if anything, Iran were treated to the full experience.
