A new threat called - "Stuxnet"

Stuxnet is a computer worm which is made to destroy industrial control system. It was first found in the month of June in Belarus (Eastern Europe) by VirusBlokAda, a security firm. A computer worm is self-replicating malicious software which causes congestion in the network by spreading in the system. They can delete files, send unauthorized mails and can encrypt any data into an unknown format, thus rendering the data meaningless.

Stuxnet is not an ordinary worm. It is designed to perform some very specific task which can cause damage of higher magnitudes than caused by other worms. It has been found by Microsoft that more than 45,000 computers were affected by Stuxnet of which 60% were in Iran, 18% in Indonesia and around 8% in India. It seems that this worm has been created specifically to attack nuclear facility in Iran. It is because Stuxnet has been found in its Bushehr nuclear plant, and few of the centrifuges were dropped last year in its nuclear refinery at Natanz.

It is good that this worm doesn't target all the industries, as 15 plants around the world had been infected, but it didn't stopped the proper functioning of the systems and the worms were removed, according to Siemens (a German Engineering conglomerate). On the other side - they target to specific project, plant or an organization. This worm enables its creator to change the control mechanism, stop the plant, increase or decrease the rate of injection of nuclear elements; and make many undesirable changes. If this happens, it would be a great threat to the whole society. Moreover, it can not be determined from where the worm was originated and who controls it. 

It is believed that creating Stuxnet has been supported by a strong financial and a big know-how of some government. It is not the work of regular hackers or any cyber-criminal who do it for money, curiosity or pleasure.

It is believed that Stuxnet uses 2 compromised security certifications – one from the firms of Taiwan and the second from Windows when it had security loop-holes. This helps Stuxnet to gain access within the system without any permission and can breach the security easily. 

Sometimes companies and security agencies do not connect their systems to the Internet, but Stuxnet can spread easily through gizmo's like memory card, pen drives, PDA's, etc... It can also spread through the shared networks. It is very difficult to impose a check on it every time.

So, it’s the time when the government, firms, institutions, and security agencies keep a tight security check on their systems. I hope that Stuxnet doesn’t cause any catastrophe.