“Proliferation is a real problem, and no country is prepared to deal with it,” said Melissa Hathaway, a former United States national cybersecurity coordinator. The widespread availability of the attack techniques revealed by the software has set off alarms among industrial control specialists, she said: “All of these guys are scared to death. We have about 90 days to fix this before some hacker begins using it.”
The ability of Stuxnet to infiltrate these systems will “require a complete reassessment” of security systems and processes, starting with federal technology standards and nuclear regulations, said Joe Weiss, a specialist in the security of industrial control systems who is managing partner at Applied Control Solutions in Cupertino, Calif.
One big question is why its creators let the software spread widely, giving up many of its secrets in the process.
A more detailed report on the Stuxnet worm. While the information now being discovered about this attack gives us a glimpse of strategies of a cyber war, the Worm itself apparently fails in that it was not focused enough and that it was discovered at all.
