cyber warfare
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- ukit
...takes down Iran's nuclear facilities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/2…
"The cyber worm, called Stuxnet, has been the object of intense study since its detection in June. As more has become known about it, alarm about its capabilities and purpose have grown. Some top cyber security experts now say Stuxnet's arrival heralds something blindingly new: a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world – to destroy something."
- lukus_W0
wow - heard about this other day and posted http://www.qbn.com/topics/641984… .. but didn't realise that it had already caused damage.
- ukit0
This article goes through a pretty detailed rundown of how the virus works
- ukit0
Langner zeroes in on Stuxnet's ability to "fingerprint" the computer system it infiltrates to determine whether it is the precise machine the attack-ware is looking to destroy. If not, it leaves the industrial computer alone.
Stuxnet's ability to autonomously and without human assistance discriminate among industrial computer systems is telling. It means, says Langner, that it is looking for one specific place and time to attack one specific factory or power plant in the entire world.
"Stuxnet is the key for a very specific lock – in fact, there is only one lock in the world that it will open," Langner says in an interview. "The whole attack is not at all about stealing data but about manipulation of a specific industrial process at a specific moment in time. This is not generic. It is about destroying that process."
Once a system is infected, Stuxnet simply sits and waits – checking every five seconds to see if its exact parameters are met on the system. When they are, Stuxnet is programmed to activate a sequence that will cause the industrial process to self-destruct, Langner says.
- lukus_W0
I wonder what will happen when it finds it's target?
- If it was me I would make the keyboard cat video come up and then - BOOM:)ukit
- can't decide. keyboard cat or MacGruber.akrokdesign
- the video would have to work offlinePupsipu
- monNom0
kinda scary that it spread to over 30,000 systems (via flash drive!), even if if was only intended for 1 target.
somebody needs to disconnect the USB jacks on those computers.