In recent years, the internet war has been the most concerning issue in the world.

Computer crime has

been in existence for a long time, although in the past few years, it has risen rapidly. Governments have
started to spend substantial amounts of money to protect their sensitive systems from being attacked.
This essay will examine the most dangerous cyberattack, Stuxnet.

Firstly, Stuxnet is a malicious software, developed to attack control systems of large industrial sites. It
could infiltrate large computer systems in order to find a target computer for infection. In 2010, the
virus was discovered when it targeted Iranian nuclear systems. Holloyway (2015) argues that ‘over
fifteen Iranian facilities were attacked and infiltrated by the Stuxnet worm.’ In addition, they believed
that their machines were infected through the use of a USB thumb drive. Moreover, some information
security experts assert that Stuxnet worm exploits zero day security vulnerabilities in Microsoft systems.

The virus mechanism works in three phases to compromise a computer system. The first phase is
analysing and targeting windows systems to replicate itself in these machines before it seeks out Step7
software, which is used to control the system’s equipment (Holloyway 2015). Finally, the worms are able
to access the industrial program logic controllers (Holloyway 2015).

In conclusion, Stuxnet worm is designed to infect large critical systems that are based on Microsoft
systems through exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities and executing three steps to access the target.

References

Holloway, M 2015, ‘Stuxnet Worm Attack on Iranian Nuclear Facilities’, Introduction to Nuclear Energy,
viewed 16 July 2015, < http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/holloway1/>