We created the impression that it motivated our actions in Korea, Viet Nam, and the Mideast. World War Two followed the same paradigm: “Not in my back yard.”Īs we became the self-proclaimed World Police, we tasked ourselves as the champions of Freedom, Democracy, and Capitalism and protectors of the weak and downtrodden… especially if there was a buck to be made in the process and it did not take place on our soil. Historically, partly due to the vast separation from the continents of Europe and Asia especially, American politics and foreign policy were isolationist until our alliances within Europe prior to World War One contributed to our involvement there…on on their continent. Most Americans of that time were complacent and took their privilege and power within the world economy and military for granted, assuming the dream would never end.
In effect, we taught our enemies how to bring down the house of cards that had sheltered our pampered way of life. Stuxnet was a game-changer that dictated the future paradigms of international espionage that also included data-mining of their targets. Long before the September 11th attacks on the United States, there had been numerous malware developed that attempted to utilize the internet that were financially motivated and did not involve multi-national cooperation to execute. It exploited four zero-day vulnerabilities and utilized almost half a gigabyte of data, which was previously unprecedented in any other malware virus, and effectively upped the ante as far as both defensive or offensive future strategies for cyber warfare. If it found nothing it remained dormant and undetected within the computer, at least until such time as the opportunity presented itself. Once installed, it began to propagate within all other computers within the network, scanning for Siemens System 7 on computers that controlled a PLC.
Once described as “…having attorney’s fingerprints all over it…”, to create the impression of not violating any International Laws as much as possible, it had an alleged end date, and only effected a very small percentage of systems or networks outside of Iran specifically the gas centrifuges of the Natanz and Bushehr facilities, causing them to either over-run or slow down so as to self-destruct from a variety of possible factors, while sending false (normal) monitoring information to the users.īecause Iran’s targeted PLC’s were not connected to the internet, the virus had to be introduced via an infected USB drive by a mole within Iran’s development facilities.
Stuxnet was composed of three modules: a worm that executed all routines related to the main payload of the attack a link file that automatically executed the propagated copies of the worm and a rootkit component responsible for hiding all malicious files and processes, preventing detection of the presence of Stuxnet. It was not domain-specific and could be used as a platform for attacking both SACADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and PLC systems.
It was designed to target Microsoft Windows operating systems that utilized Siemens Step7 software. What was most especially interesting was that it was the first of its kind to specifically target programmable logic controllers, (PLC’s) which control electromechanical processes such as those related to automation and control of machinery and assembly lines.
Stuxnet was a malicious computer worm that was allegedly generated in the early days of the new millennium by the joint efforts of the United States and Israel designed to disrupt and sabotage the weapons-grade Uranium enrichment facilities in Iran, especially the Natanz nuclear facility and the Bushehr nuclear power plant. It also set the stage for what was to follow. Stuxnet was not the first shot fired, but it was the most widely publicized and successful viral attack that had geopolitical implications of its day.