Stuxnet worm heralds new era of global cyberwar
Attack aimed at Iran nuclear plant and recently revealed 2008 incident at US base show spread of cyber weapons
Thursday 30 September 2010
The memory sticks were scattered in a washroom at a US military base in the Middle East that was providing support for the Iraq war.
They were deliberately infected with a computer worm, and the undisclosed foreign intelligence agency behind the operation was counting on the fallibility of human nature. According to those familiar with the events, it calculated that a soldier would pick up one of the memory sticks, pocket it and – against regulations – eventually plug it into a military laptop.
It was correct.
The result was the delivery of a self-propagating malicious worm into the computer system of the US military’s central command – Centcom – which would take 14 months to eradicate.