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Stuxnet: The real life sci-fi story of 'the world's first digital weapon'

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The story of Stuxnet has all the elements of an ‘80s sci-fi.

There’s a computer virus that physically destroys machines and has the potential to shut down cities; a hostile nation’s shady attempts to build a nuclear weapon; and elite spy agencies lurking in the shadows.

But Stuxnet is all too real, and the implications of this cyber attack has prompted Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney to tell the story in his latest doco Zero Days.

So, what is Stuxnet?

To start at the beginning, Stuxnet is a highly-sophisticated computer worm that was discovered in 2010 and was essentially the world’s first digital weapon.

Stuxnet was developed by the American and Israeli governments and used to wreak havoc on an Iranian nuclear facility called Natanz.

It targeted the computer system of the machines used to enrich uranium, known as centrifuges, and instructed them to spin the machines out of control. Eventually that force broke the centrifuges. At the same time, Stuxnet would report to the control room that nothing was amiss.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveils a centrifuge.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveils a sample of the third generation centrifuge for uranium enrichment.()

Over a few years, about 20 percent of Iran’s centrifuges spun out of control and were destroyed. Iran’s nuclear scientists had no idea why so many centrifuges were busted.

It was a brilliant, sophisticated attack.

So, what went wrong?

According to anonymous sources in Zero Days, the Stuxnet plan - which the the US intelligence organisation, The National Security Agency (NSA) referred to as Operation Olympic Games - was running smoothly until Israel decided to modify the code for Stuxnet to make it more aggressive.

Five months later, security analysts started to notice a weird bug that was infecting and shutting down computers. Initially it was picked up in Belarus. The geeks of the security world - the heroes of Gibney’s Zero Days - began to dig into the mysterious code.

Instead of the usual couple of hours it took to unpack a worm’s code, Stuxnet took months to decipher. What they discovered horrified and amazed them. Stuxnet was the first malware they’d seen that could actually physically destroy something. Until now, malware could corrupt computers and data, but Stuxnet opened up the possibility of using hacking to overtake machines.

For the US Government, the problem was just starting.

Although America has never acknowledged that Stuxnet was a joint US-Israeli effort, Iran got the message. Once the word got out about why the centrifuges were breaking, Iran redoubled its efforts. Iran has also boosted its cyberwarfare capabilities.

'Like the day after Hiroshima'

As Alex Gibney tells Hack, Stuxnet isn’t a threat anymore, but it’s a game-changer.

“The Stuxnet code itself is not that dangerous because it’s designed to do one thing, and that is impact a certain kind of machine inside the Natanz nuclear facility,” he explains.

“What it did do, is that it set a very ugly precedent and it set the world on notice that such an attack is possible.”

Gibney describes Stuxnet as a “pandora’s box” for modern warfare.

The legal precedent of attacking another country’s physical infrastructure by way of computer malware was now established."

In just a few years since the Stuxnet attack came to light, a lot has changed in the cyber warfare realm. Stuxnet was considered the first cyber-physical attack but there have already been other similar attacks that target what’s known as critical infrastructure.

In 2014, the German Government confirmed that an unnamed steel mill was targeted by hackers, destroying one of its furnaces. Again, they hacked into the facility control program and overrode it.

In July last year, American security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek demonstrated they could remotely hack a Jeep, allowing them to control the car's transmission and brakes.

In December 2015, a malware program known as BlackEnergy shut down 30 electricity substations in Ukraine, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians during winter. It’s believed that Russians were behind the attack.

It’s clear these kinds of cyber weapons can cause widespread damage, and highly-connected countries like Australia and America are very vulnerable to attack. Despite that, Alex Gibney says there’s too much secrecy around cyber warfare and no rules of engagement.

“The countries that are the most powerful in cyber are the least willing to impose on rules that will mostly affect them.”

“The current norm is get away with anything you can.”

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