The Stuxnet computer worm, discovered in June 2010, was the first piece of malware found in the public domain that is designed to spy on and subvert industrial process systems. Stuxnet was claimed to have been created by the U.S. and Israel in order to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The malware was reported to have caused substantial damage to the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear enrichment laboratory in Iran.
The worm specifically targeted Siemens industrial software and equipment, making itself inert if the target software was not found and containing safeguards to limit the spread of the infection. It was the first piece of malware to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit. It was also programmed to erase itself on a specific date in June 2012. The design of the worm suggests that it was intended to achieve a specific objective against a particular target rather than to support a general intelligence-gathering operation.