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Stuxnet was designed to destroy Power Plant

by on23 September 2010
 

Not sure who designed it
Insecurity experts claim to have worked out that the Stuxnet worm was the first known cyber super weapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target.

Some top cyber security experts now say Stuxnet's arrival is a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world to destroy something. At least one expert told AP that it may have been Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, which much of the world condemns as a nuclear weapons threat.

Stuxnet was considered too large, too encrypted, too complex and used tricks, like taking control of a computer system without the user taking any action or clicking any button other than inserting an infected memory stick. It would have taken a huge amount of time, cash and software engineering talent to identify and exploit such vulnerabilities in industrial control software systems.Ralph Langner, a German cyber-security researcher said that Stuxnet is a 100-percent-directed cyber attack aimed at destroying an industrial process in the physical world.

Langner said that Stuxnet's can "fingerprint" the computer system it infiltrates to determine whether it is the precise machine the attack-ware is looking to destroy. If it isn’t it leaves the industrial computer alone. It means, that the worm is looking for one specific place and time to attack one specific factory or power plant in the world, Langer said. Stuxnet reveals no clues within its code to what it is after. It would appear however that Stuxnet first appeared in Iran which could mean that either the US or Israel built it to take out the controversial Bushehr Iranian nuclear power plant.

Langner suspects that the Bushehr plant may already have been wrecked by Stuxnet because its startup in late August was delayed.
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