Stuxnet: Cyberwar Revolution in Military Affairs

Abstract

On June 17th, 2010, security researchers at a small Belarusian firm known as VirusBlockAda identified malicious software (malware) that infected USB memory sticks.1 In the months that followed, there was a flurry of activity in the computer security community - revealing that this discovery identified only one component of a new computer worm2 known as Stuxnet. This software was designed to specifically target industrial equipment. Once it was revealed that the majority of infections were discovered in Iran,3 along with an unexplained decommissioning of centrifuges at the Iranian fuel enrichment plant (FEP) at Natanz,4 many in the media speculated that the ultimate goal of Stuxnet was to target Iranian nuclear facilities. In November of 2010, some of these suspicions were validated when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publically acknowledged that a computer worm created problems for a "limited number of our [nuclear] centrifuges." 5 Reputable experts in the computer security community have already labeled Stuxnet as "unprecedented,"6 an "evolutionary leap,"7 and "the type of threat we hope to never see again."8

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 15, 2011
Accession Number
ADA546439

Entities

People

  • Paulo Shakarian

Organizations

  • United States Military Academy

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Networks
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Cyber Threats
  • Cyber Warfare
  • Cyberattacks
  • Cybersecurity
  • Cyberspace Operations
  • Denial Of Service Attack
  • Electronic Mail
  • Industrial Equipment
  • Information Systems
  • Internet
  • Local Area Networks
  • Malware
  • Operating Systems
  • United States Military Academy

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Cyber
  • Cyber - Legality in Cyberspace