The Big Event

 A New Class of Weapons

OpenDemocracy. "Cyberspace" 11/6/2007 via flickr. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

From the people that brought you the blue screen of death and Windows Vista comes a new type of nuance: the continuously rebooting windows computer! If only it were as simple as a software bug. 

The year was 2010 and various Windows Computers were randomly restarting in Iran. Immediately, cyber security companies assumed it was some type of virus. Nearby at a top secret Iranian Uranium Enrichment Plant, nuclear centrifuges were being destroyed at an alarming rate. This could have been attributed to development errors in the uranium enrichment process. These seem like two completely unrelated events right?

In June of that same year, cyber security firms such as Kaspersky, discovered a malicious piece of code, but they did not know what it was or what it did. Further investigation into this code revealed that it was no ordinary piece of malware. It was way more complex and ingenious than anything anyone had ever seen. Something like this was not developed by your average computer hacker. This took resources, money, and possibly years of work. The race was now on to find out what it did before it actually caused harm.

As cyber “detectives” began to crack this code, they began to realize that it was looking for something in specific. It was looking for a certain type of component at a specific location. This location was the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Plant in Iran.

Security analyst soon realized that it was aimed at destroying the nuclear centrifuges in the plant, which had the sole purpose of enriching uranium. Someone had used cyber space to launch an attack that would cause physical damage. They had a created a new class of weapons. Weapons that couldn’t be seen or felt. Weapons that did not explode of directly kill. Some organization out there had created the world’s first cyber weapon: Stuxnet.

By the time it was discovered, the damage had already been done. The Iranian nuclear development program had suffered millions in loses and was set back a few years.