Best Worm Ever

Best Worm Ever

I'm starting to see stories about the "Stuxnet" computer virus that is supposed to have struck industrial control programs in Iran more heavily than in other countries, and therefore may be a deliberate attack on that country's nuclear weapons development peaceful nuclear energy program. There aren't that many newspaper articles about it, nor any that have much to say other than that it's a truly impressive piece of malware. I finally found a site written by people with more hacker mojo. The Motley Moose claims that the virus exploits something called "zero day vulnerability," which refers to a flaw that the software's developer has not yet even discovered, let alone tried to patch. A single zero-day vulnerability, the Moose claims, would establish the ordinary hacker's reputation for life. Stuxnet exploits four of them. Also, the virus, which may have been hanging around stealthily since 2009, seems to be mutating in response to clean-up efforts.

Though naturally all eyes are on the U.S. or Israel as suspects, it's not clear yet who dreamed this stuff up. The virus may have been intended to drift around until it located a specific target, but it's impossible to be sure whether the target has been found. In the meantime, though, Iran has announced another delay in its nuclear program.

There is a very interesting discussion in the comments thread at Moose that clearly was written by a bunch of cybersecurity professionals. I couldn't follow most of it, but it was obvious they were both confused and impressed.

Here's a detailed report. I'm just glad I use a Mac.