The first known and confirmed cyber super weapon has been discovered. It’s called Stuxnet and technically it is a logic bomb. It is capable of spreading like a virus or worm, and can rewrite the operating systems controlling powerplants including nuclear. It is specifically designed to sabotage power plants, and it wants to do it too.
The CIA used a logic bomb in 1982 to destroy the Siberian gas pipeline in the Soviet Union; that explosion was visible from space. But that was a long time ago before the internet and USB sticks. Now things are much easier to destroy.
Stuxnet’s new abilities including being able to rewrite the logic system in, say, the machinery of a power plant and then covering its tracks. The result? All manner of things could happen to the plant, including a meltdown, and a meltdown is something you do not want to happen at a site with a nuclear reactor. The kind of supervisory control and data acquisition (or SCADA) components Stuxnet targets are used in everything from chemical, electric and nuclear power plants to factories all over the world. In other words, this thing could seriously damage a country’s physical economy, power grid or production capabilities.
In other words, all those movies we’ve seen where terrorists or governments use hackers to destroy the infrastructure of the United States; well it’s all possible now, and Stuxnet is the first REAL example of this.
Via: DVICE
