If it’s still unclear exactly what the Stuxnet worm was meant to target, it’s possible that we won’t entirely understand the consequences of this now notorious malware attack for many years to come. Maybe it will turn out that Stuxnet was little more than the over-hyped tech version of the recent hurricane that left a path of destruction everywhere it touched down over large parts of Asia – or maybe we’ll see that it ushered in a new era whose anxieties and terrors surpassed the most maudlin and morose predictions of futurists and Hollywood directors.
First reports showed that the Stuxnet worm had targeted the industrial control systems, also called SCADA, at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, but others contended that a different Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz was the destination. Centrifuge production at Natanz is down 23 percent since May 2009, which is roughly when the earliest version of the Stuxnet worm was first noticed. However, just last week the Iranians announced that the Bushehr site was not going to go on line for at least three more months. But, says Tehran, the delays have nothing to do with Stuxnet – even as the Iranians acknowledge that some personal computers belonging to staff at the Bushehr plant have been affected.
