The Stuxnet worm was the first digital weapon that was designed to physically sabotage industrial equipment; the article details how it was used to attack Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2009, causing centrifuges to fail. The worm spread through infected USB drives and targeted industrial control systems, altering the speed of the centrifuges to damage them. Since the devices in the nuclear facility were air-gapped, the attackers first had to infect computers that belonged to companies that were connected to the nuclear facility to spread the worm. Following the attack, Iran installed new centrifuges and ramped up enrichment of uranium. Although the attacker is unnamed in this article, the worm is believed to have been deployed by the US and Israel.
