Scourge · June 17 2010

The Scourge of Stuxnet

Chronicle

In June 2010 Sergey Ulasen of the small Belarusian antivirus firm VirusBlokAda began analysing a sample after an Iranian customer's machines kept rebooting. It turned out to be Stuxnet, a worm that used several Windows zero-days and targeted Siemens Step7 systems and their PLCs. It had been built to sabotage the uranium-enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, showing operators normal readings while it damaged them.

Lesson learned

It was the first known digital weapon to cause physical damage: from then on, industrial control security stopped being a topic for a handful of specialists.

Prayer of reparation

O Stuxnet, who spun the centrifuges astray while showing calm readings, let our plants never trust their own screens blindly. Amen.

How it is remembered

Remembered by truly separating industrial networks, checking every USB stick that enters a plant and verifying physical processes with independent measurements.