The Stuxnet worm may have actually pushed forward Iran’s
controversial nuclear programme over the long term. That’s
according to a report published by the Royal United Services
Institute, an influential defence think tank in the UK. The
infamous worm infected systems at Iran’s uranium enrichment
facility at Natanz in 2009 and 2010, hobbling high-speed
centrifuges after infecting computers connected to SCADA
industrial control systems at the plant. The sophisticated
attack, seen as an alternative to a military strike against the
facility, is credited with putting Iran’s nuclear programme back
by between 18 months to two years. The malware worked by
infiltrating the SCADA systems used to run the high-speed gas
centrifuges. It then randomly, and surreptitiously, speeded them
up and slowed them down to induce seemingly random, but
frequent, failures. However, a journal article published by the
Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) claims that Iranian
authorities redoubled their efforts after Stuxnet was discover