Experts Warn of Threat from Stuxnet Variants

Stuxnet was a highly targeted worm seemingly developed by the United States and/or Israel with the specific intent of disrupting the Iranian nuclear program. Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle, and now the techniques used in Stuxnet are available to any script kiddie–placing the critical infrastructure of the United States, and power and manufacturing facilities around the world at risk.

The worm’s source code has also been leaked online by members of the hacktivist group Anonymous. Security experts warn that the code could serve as the foundation for future variants. “With the growing public body of knowledge on Stuxnet, the risk increases that these more capable for-hire teams’ efforts may be informed by the Stuxnet design,” Kurt Baumgartner, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told Threatpost.

To read more about the threat from Stuxnet variants, read the rest of this ThreatPost blog post.