The Quiet Invasion--Stuxnet and the Shadow of 2010
In 2010, the world witnessed the beginning of war without a shot fired.
Stuxnet - it was the first cyber weapon ever to sneak into the depths of Iran's nuclear facility, Natanz.
The worm, said to be a top-secret U.S.-Israeli development, entered the facility, which is disconnected from the Internet, via a single USB stick.
It had only one target: a control system manufactured by Siemens AG.
The worm secretly spread its infection, disrupting and destroying centrifuges while appearing normal on surveillance screens.
Stuxnet was an anomaly.
The program size was 500 kilobytes, hundreds of times larger than a typical virus.
It simultaneously exploited four zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows, disguised itself as legitimate software with a stolen digital signature, and precisely selected its targets for attack.
It was truly an "invisible assassin" in its ability to cover its tracks without involving unrelated systems.
When this silent invasion was exposed, the world took notice.
Cyberspace is no longer a realm of information transmission.
It has become a new battlefield, where nations are pitted against one another.
Stuxnet quietly but surely opened the door to history.
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