On March 4, 2012, CBS News aired a 60 Minutes segment on Stuxnet. You can find a transcript of that segment here.
For those that don't know, Stuxnet was one of the most advanced computer viruses ever seen. It infected Iranian nuclear plants and caused centrifuges to spin out of control, ultimately delaying (but not stopping) the Iranian nuclear program. The segment didn't reveal any new information on Stuxnet, but was an interesting summary nonetheless. I picked out a few of the highlights:
- Gen. Michael Hayden (former head of NSA/CIA) thinks that Stuxnet was a "good idea", but refused to speculate on who was behind Stuxnet.
- We still don't know who was behind Stuxnet, but most experts think that it was a nation-state. Moreover, Stuxnet's successful execution depended upon inside knowledge of the Iranian nuclear plants. This means that an intelligence agency was likely involved (in order to gather that inside knowledge).
- Stuxnet crawled through the internet targeting a certain piece of equipment: a Siemens S7-300 programmable logic controller (PLC). A PLC controls the physical machinery within factories, critical infrastructure, etc. Stuxnet went through a certain "fingerprinting process" to make sure that it only targeted Iranian PLCs at the Iranian nuclear power plants.
- Whoever was behind Stuxnet wanted the virus to stay hidden. In essence, Stuxnet's handlers wanted the virus to slowly sabotage the Iranian program, making the Iranians think that they were suffering technical problems rather than a cyberattack. Stuxnet's discovery makes it somewhat of a blown operation in that it was never meant to be seen or "come to the public's attention."
I've embedded the entire segment below; you can also find it on the CBS News website here.
Below is a 60 Minutes Overtime segment titled Stuxnet copycats: Let the hacking begin. You can find that segment here on the CBS News website.
Leave a Reply