The group anonymous released the Stuxnet worm upon the security company HBGary on Feb 13th. The attack comes as revenge for HBGary’s attempt to track down and identify anonymous’ members.
The Stuxnet worm was originally used to hack into Iran’s uranium processing centers last year. Successfully penetrating the facilities in Natanz and delaying the start of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr. Most information on Stuxnet leads to it being created by a highly funded and highly skilled group of hackers. Finger pointing leads to Israel playing a large role in it’s creation, with help from a few western powers. WikiLeaks documents have proved that the U.S had its sights on undermining Iran’s nuclear program with sabotage, and with the size, complexity and designed purpose of the worm, it’s hard not to put 2 and 2 together.
The version used by anonymous is much less potent as the worm was designed mainly as a one shot hit to Iran’s nuclear program. However the worm still has the capabilities to do quite a bit of damage, a group with the skills anonymous has proven to have could create their own VERY destructive version of the malware.
It should be interesting to see how this all plays out, from my point of view it seems anonymous is a pretty strong group of damn smart people who are only doing what they think is right. With the occasional prank here and there. But they’ve contributed a lot to the world going after Scientology and fighting for a more transparent government.
HBGary on the other hand, I know nothing about. I assume their good guys working their day to day, and that’s going to make it a little tough to compete with an unknown amount of unknown skilled hackers who’ve already gotten into their systems.
Let the battle begin I say.
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