Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History

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This paper describes the way investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency were able to decrypt or decode a digital computer worm. The computer warm was allegedly created by the US to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities or its centrifuges in June 2010. This dangerous and malicious software was created with the aim of sabotaging the country`s uranium enrichment program thereby making history as the world’s first bona fide cyber weapon. The objective of this research is to investigate the way the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, were in a position of decoding a destructive digital worm. The warm was slithering its way to the computers of Iran with a core aim of preventing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from his attempt to build a nuclear weapon. This made them spend months deconstructing what would come to be referred to as the most complex malware in history. The method used in the research is the allowance of the virus to spread quickly across computers via USB sticks, which are infected. However, it is found that the virus was making use of a “zero-day” as an exploit to spread. Zerodays are hacking world`s potent weapons, which exploit the vulnerability in software. In this case, the vulnerability is discovered and the LNK file of Windows Explorer a fundamental component of Microsoft Windows (Zetter, 2011). The infected USB stick is then inserted into another computer. As the Explorer automatically scans the contents of the stick, the exploit code is awakened and it surreptitiously drops a large file that is partially encrypted into the computer. The result of the exploit was one, which was ingenious and seemed obvious in retrospect. This happens because it attacked a ubiquitous function. The vulnerability is reported to Microsoft by VirusBlokAda, which goes public with the discovery in a post to a security forum. The research comes into a conclusion that the computer security industry decides to go into action by decrypting and deconstructing Stuxnet. More assessments are filtered out. From the research, it is discovered that the code had been launched into the world a year before, in June 2009 (Zetter, 2011).

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Zetter, K. (2011, Novemner 07). How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History. Retrieved September 25, 2013, from wired.com: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/google-wiretap-appeal/