STUXNET Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

STUXNET - Research Paper Example As the engineer hooked the computer to the Internet, the worm spread far and wide. How the Stuxnet Worm Spread The Stuxnet worm started to spread in March 2010, but it took its first variant about three months from then to appear. As people learnt about the existence of the worm on 15 July 2010, the servers for two mailing lists were attacked with the distributed denial-of-service on the industrial-systems security. Although at that time, the source of attack could not be worked out, yet it was suspected to be the Stuxnet worm. As a result of the attack, one of the two mailing lists got disabled, thus interrupting a very important informative source for the factories and the power plants. Two more variants of the Stuxnet worm surfaced; the first in March 2010 and the second in April 2010. In the authors’ opinion, the second and substantially improved variant showed up because of slow progression of the Stuxnet worm. The third variant that surfaced in April 2010 had only minor improvements. There is a build time-stamp in thee worm that starts from 3 February 2010. According to the report delivered by the Sky News on 25 November 2010 in the United Kingdom, an anonymous source whose IT security organization was also unidentified sent the news to Sky News that the black market had received a variation of the Stuxnet worm, but there was lack of consensus among the security experts over this matter. How the Stuxnet Worm Works Stuxnet makes use of vulnerability just like Windows uses the shortcut files to expand to new systems. The Stuxnet worm’s design was bottom-up so that it could effectively attack the systems implemented for the management of industrial networks like chemical manufacturing facilities and power plants as well as the systems of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). In the start, the Stuxnet worm was thought to progress through such removable drives as USB sticks. However, about two weeks after the Stuxnet worm was first id entified, researchers of the Kaspersky Lab working in Moscow found that an unknown security flaw in the sharing of printer resources by the Windows could also help the Stuxnet worm spread. Microsoft found a way to fix this vulnerability with MS10-061 which varies in risk from one type of windows to another. â€Å"At least one aspect of what Stuxnet does is to take control of the process and to be able to do†¦whatever the author or programmer wants it to do. This has potentially devastating consequences, and there needs to be a lot more attention focused on it† (Weiss cited in â€Å"‘Stuxnet’ Worm Far†). The Target of the Stuxnet Worm The main target of the Stuxnet worm is the Siemens software. One trait that distinguishes the Stuxnet worm from most viruses that have been identified to date is that it remains silent till the time the worm locates Siemens software in the Windows system. Once the Siemens software is found, the Stuxnet worm exploits up to four 0-day attacks. The Stuxnet worm infected the SCADA systems in 14 functional plants of Siemens, though the infections could not hold the infected plants’ productions. According to the IDG News reports, the Stuxnet worm has infected systems at the Siemens plants in North America, Korea, and the UK, while the maximum infections have so far been made in the plants operating in