Explore the latest news and trends  

Sign up for our weekly security newsletter


Be the first to receive important updates on security





Send

Stuxnet Attack, a Demonstration of Cyber-Weapons’ Capability

The Pentagon believes a foreign country getting involved in computer sabotage can mean a deed of warfare, a discovery, which like never before, gives USA an opportunity for reacting with conventional military force, published The Wall Street Journal in news on May 31, 2011.

Assaults that lately struck the networks at the Pentagon as also the deliberate destruction of the nuclear program in Iran with the Stuxnet PC-virus have led to the US urgently building an approach that's more formalized vis-à-vis cyber attacks.

Apparently, it was on June 17, 2010 that the puzzle started to emerge and eventually materialize.

Says Sergey Ulasen of the R&D unit of VirusBlokAda a small firm located in the Belarus capital of Minsk, PCs strangely kept on shutting down and rebooting. Initially, everybody thought that probably a hardware problem had occurred, but when many PCs were found disrupted, it became clear that some kind of software glitch had occurred, Ulasen elaborates. Guardian.co.uk reported this on May 30, 2011.

To understand what precisely went wrong, Ulasen was allowed to acquire admission into a malfunctioning computer from remote; however, he quickly felt that he required assistance. Asking senior analyst Oleg Kupreyev of the firm to help him, Ulasen and his colleague over a period of 7 days engaged in solving the worm's samples they had seized that were disturbing the Iranian systems.

But with the passage of a few months, the malware started to act brutally cunning so much that Iran condemned Israel and USA with creating it. Moreover, a fresh identification was given to the worm. It was called Stuxnet that would possibly be recognized as a historical online weapon, which altered the modern warfare scenario.

Nevertheless, Pentagon authorities feel that the most advanced PC-assaults need government resources. An example of this are the weapons, utilized in one prominent technological strike like pulling down a country's electricity infrastructure, which possibly got created with state sponsorship.

And although no precise evidence may exist, the circumstantial clues regarding the cyber-weapon's sources indicate that Iran's accusation was perhaps correct. For, hardly did many countries have the money, capability and motive for creating Stuxnet.

Related article: Stuxnet malware Signed With JMicron Certificate

» SPAMfighter News - 6/8/2011

3 simple steps to update drivers on your Windows PCSlow PC? Optimize your Slow PC with SLOW-PCfighter!Email Cluttered with Spam? Free Spam Filter!

Dear Reader

We are happy to see you are reading our IT Security News.

We do believe, that the foundation for a good work environment starts with fast, secure and high performing computers. If you agree, then you should take a look at our Business Solutions to Spam Filter & Antivirus for even the latest version of Exchange Servers - your colleagues will appreciate it!

Go back to previous page
Next