Stuxnet Virus a new kind of cyber war?

Stuxnet Virus a new kind of cyber war?

We all know that several Countries are engaging in a war, a cyberwar against each other, spying, theft of technology, breaking to militaries top secret project and as well as acquiring important data from governments communication facilities.

But with the recent admission of Iran that their nuclear facilities operations were halted due to the Stuxnet Virus, is this, the beginning of a new kind of cyber war? Iran is said to be the victim of the first cyberwar.

What is a Stuxnet virus?

Stuxnet Virus - Stuxnet is a Windows-specific computer worm first discovered in July 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems, it is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit. It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used to control and monitor industrial processes. Stuxnet includes the capability to reprogram the PLCs and hide its changes. (wiki)

This virus according to expert s said to be a very sophisticated virus, a new cyber weapon, this new cyber weapon is said to be funded by government or an organization and it took months to complete or even years.

It attacks industrial system, specially the logic controller. The virus origin is said to be from Israel and it’s specifically targets Iran nuclear facilities. Several Countries also were infected including China, Indonesia, India, Australia and the United States.

Some Characteristics of the Stuxnet Virus

• Malware
• Works only in Windows Operating System
• Includes programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit
• Capable of reprogramming a PLC
• Spreads to USB Flash Drive
• Also spreads through Network
• Written in 4 Programming Languages
• With User mode and Root kit capability
• Do have its own websites for Command and control servers for Updates
• With fingerprinting technology allows it to precisely identify the systems it infects

image source:trendsupdates.com

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