Click on any phrase to play the video at that point.Close The
idea behind the Stuxnet computer worm is actually quite simple.
We don't want Iran to get the bomb. Their major asset for
developing nuclear weapons is the Natanz uranium enrichment
facility. The gray boxes that you see, these are real-time
control systems. Now if we manage to compromise these systems
that control drive speeds and valves, we can actually cause a
lot of problems with the centrifuge. The gray boxes don't run
Windows software; they are a completely different technology.
But if we manage to place a good Windows virus on a notebook
that is used by a maintenance engineer to configure this gray
box, then we are in business. And this is the plot behind
Stuxnet. So we start with a Windows dropper. The payload goes
onto the gray box, damages the centrifuge, and the Iranian
nuclear program is delayed -- mission accomplished. That's easy,
huh? I want to tell you how we found that out. When we started
our research on Stuxnet six months ago, it