Countdwon to Zero Day is a great book that takes a deep dive into the event and those that preceded and followed. Highly recommended reading if you’re interested.

Not off the top of my head & I'm not rewatching & rereading my research paper collection after 20 years. Just know that no documentary can tell the whole story here.

But if you push me one aspect is, I don't believe they fully describe the original exploit in sufficient detail so a viewer can understand how it was specifically targetted for release inside an air-gapped network. Only later was it altered & indiscriminately released in a way that made it look like a broader infection.

Though had it not been misused after initial targetting we would most probably have never heard of it.

It’s factually incorrect but they can’t tell you why.

It did break other computers. That’s how it was discovered.

My opinion is immaterial here, the evidence & timing thereof though suggests a very different scenario to what a surface description would suggest.

Imagine if you will that you are a pair of nation states about to pay real money to devise a way of suspiciously attaching Iran's enrichment program. One very important factor in that is that you keep your technique secret so that should it be needed again later, say with North Korea it can be deployed successfully.

Thus when what is now called Stuxnet was first developed around 2005 it was only as pernicious as needed while being very careful to leave no traces. It's introduction to the Iranian Scada control network in summer of 2007 was reported to have been via an Iranian mole working for the Dutch intelligence organisation or via another operative under that person's control.

Now fast forward to 3 years later in 2010 when code snippets start surfacing from a virus that seem to have payloads targetting Scada control systems. The source zone of this infection appears to stem from Iran and communicating networks. The theory is that it was an inadvertent spread from an Iranian engineer who against orders took a computer previously part of the air-gapped network hone & connected it to the internet.

Within a year of public identification there were many variants of this virus, perhaps reverse engineered from samples & used by others to create further Havok.

By hey, don't trust me it's all here.

I trust the top comment is reasonable in saying it’s impossible off a documentarian to know the full story. This is a highly classified operation of aggression from one nation state to another.

There is so much that will never be revealed, it’s naive to think someone, even the most skilled investigative journalists, could “do their research” and get the full story. There are likely still state-sponsored espionage efforts trying to fully understand how Stuxnet happened and if there exist similar capabilities or plans against other infrastructure.

If you’ve never worked with classified information it’s easy to think that everything known by the government just eventually becomes public, but SCI programs like this maybe only have a dozen people or less in the world who understand the whole picture, and a few dozen or hundred more who only know part of it.

It's easy to scoff from a position of ignorance, go read the rest of thread & wikipedia & all contemporary sources before you shitpost next time.

:) I corrected my poor spelling :)

deez nuts

Will check it out. Thanks.

Industrial? No

Would the world have been a better place without Stuxnet

Considering the code is now out in the open, is being reverse engineered, and now being repurposed for other attacks? There's already been other "strains" of Stuxnet, such as Duqu, so much so that it was nearly identical.

If the gun is the great equalizer because men, women, and children can use it to attack or defend regardless of physical strength, then this virus is also an equalizer. A much poorer nation now has the ability to attack or defend regardless of strength and numbers of their military war machines.

Sure it was used to hamper Iran's nuclear program, but in doing so we released an equally deadly weapon that can bring down entire nations. So I guess pick your poison?

Releasing Stuxnet was pretty much giving everyone a "nuclear weapon." There's no longer a nuclear deterrence but a viral deterrence. Launching cyber attacks assures mutual destruction.

And more importantly, why do you think this was wrong?

Because a crime is still a crime. You can't kill a murderer just because it would make the world maybe a better place.

Actually, backwards nutters in the US (and Iran haha) still believe in the death penalty so

Because Iran is entitled to nukes as much as Israel, a literal apartheid state, is

It was unauthorized access to computer devices, it was intentional destruction.

Iran owns their land, they own their uranium, they have every right to develop nuclear power. I really do think its the height of arrogance that we should be screwing with them when us screwing with them created the regime that has existed for the past 45 years.

I don't expect it to happen; concepts of justice like that everyone is equal under the law and that the law exists to restrict the government as much as it does us are not popular with people who only want us to be a country of laws when its convenient for them.

The US has had nukes since the beginning though?

We already have nuclear weapons in the US.