Stuxnet

Stuxnet the Destroyer

Tyra Sanchez

November 23, 2013

Introduction

One of the most destructive and misunderstood cyber-attacks to date is undisputedly the STUXNET virus. STUXNET was designed to be very clean leaving little to no signature of who it was that developed and deployed it to the world. Though not initially confirmed, it was highly suspected that our own United States Government working alongside Israel may have had a hand in the production of STUXNET. There were many portions of the worm that were not indicative of what would be commonly known as a “criminal worm”. This worm has led to fear among Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) factories worldwide including power and nuclear plants. STUXNET would eventually become the first to target these automated factories that rely on computers that have been around since before the Internet era bringing the factory to a screeching halt.

Analysis

What was the STUXNET virus looking for? It didn’t attempt to link machines together and act as a BOT to create denial of service to any particular type of network or machine, but in fact it did have a specific purpose. Once it was detected and contained it appeared that STUXNET was designed to affect primarily one piece of factory automation equipment. Siemens produces a Programmable Logic Card (PLC) that was widely used in many different industries. (Siemens, 2012) These cards control numerous different types of machines that are used to produce products, control assembly lines, and work in most automated function facilities. Most notably, these cards were also being used in Iran to help control some of the equipment in the nuclear enrichment plants. Something interesting as well was that it wasn’t sure what the effect would be once the worm had found the intended target. The worm was designed to have specific tasks based on the function of the card that it found and what equipment that the card was controlling. (Dunn, 2010) Needless to say it was...