An Animated Documentary on the Stuxnet Virus

Unlike most computer viruses that are designed to harm computer systems, the Stuxnet worm was created to infect industrial machines. And it was immensely successful in its mission. In June last year, this dangerous and very-capable virus nearly sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program and also made its way to India and Indonesia.

It is relatively easy to spread the virus as described by Mark Russinovich. All the user has to do is attach a USB drive containing the Stuxnet virus and open the directory inside Windows Explorer. The virus immediately infects the system and spreads itself. The virus creators are unknown though evidence links America and Israel (Mossad) to Stuxnet.

Australia's ABC1 has created an animated documentary that describes the Stuxnet worm in plain English and the ramifications of a weapon that’s made of pure code.

Ralph Langner, the man who solved Stuxnet

Ralph Langner, who was one of the first researchers to successfully solve the sophisticated Stuxnet worm, spoke at TED 2011 on how they discovered Stuxnet and what happened in those 15,000 lines of assembly code that formed Stuxnet.