What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Industrial Cyber-Sabotage
Epic Fail Malicious programs could blow up factories and sabotage power grids Jamie SneddonStuxnet gives hackers a blueprint for sophisticated new malware Computers already do so much of our work that it seems natural to let them take care of our sabotage, too. This might have been the line of thinking that led to Stuxnet. The first known malware worm designed to disrupt industrial processes, Stuxnet began spreading in early 2009. It's unclear who wrote the worm, or why, but a consensus is gathering that a government (probably Israel's) created the worm to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program. Stuxnet seeks out and silently hijacks factory control software written by Siemens. Once it infects the computers running that software, it can command uranium-enriching centrifuges to spin out of control, thereby destroying them. Computers such as these are kept disconnected from the Internet, so getting Stuxnet to its target probably required someone to...