Stuxnet: The Ultimate Cyber Weapon [Infographic]

Stuxnet, have you heard of it? It’s a computer worm discovered in June 2010 that was jointly created by the United States and Israel to slow Iran’s nuclear efforts. Back in 2006, the US military and intelligence officials proposed a top-secret cyber war program against Iran’s uranium enrichment program. The US and Israel joined to develop the most complicated computer worm that this world has ever seen, all under the codename, “Olympic Games”. Then in 2007 a virtual replica of Iran’s Natanz Plant was built at American National Laboratories.

The US estimates that “Olympic Games” will set back Iran’s production of a nuclear weapon by one and a half to two years. In the summer of 2010, 130,000 computers were infected with the Stuxnet virus globally. Iran alone made up 60% of the computers infected by this virus. The virus was then leaked, and now anyone can get their hands on the code.

In 2011 and 2012, the program continued to run and intelligence agencies in the US and Israel were to seek out new targets that could further slow Iran’s progress. On June 24, 2012, the Stuxnet virus was turned off. However, this will not be the last of cyber weaponry that we will encounter.

Infographic by Veracode Application Security