Mikko's world: Governments, factories and washing machines
WHEN the Stuxnet virus was first detected back in June 2010, its true purpose was unknown.
Security experts were only able to confirm that it was a Windows worm that spread via USB sticks and once inside an organization, it could also spread by copying itself to network shares if they had weak passwords.
They knew that once in a system, it hid itself with a rootkit and saw if the infected computer was connected to a specific factory system. If not found, the virus did nothing. At the time, security experts did not know which factory the virus was looking for or if it had already found it. On November 29, 2010 those details were revealed when the Iranian government confirmed that a computer worm affected centrifuges in the country's uranium enrichment program.
