Stuxnet virus Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Stuxnet virus - Research Paper Example The critical infrastructure of any country consists of composite, self-governing and cyber based resources, which is vital for the nation’s financial system and supervision. It is concerned with communications, transportation, water supply, energy, emergency services, and banking and finance. On the other side, vulnerabilities also emerged causing disruption to the critical infrastructure affecting in several ways. Although there are many vulnerabilities, cyber attacks are the most prominent one. Cyber attacks approach the target in a nontraditional way. Due to inequity in the military strengths, hackers attack this critical infrastructure affecting both the economy as well as the military sector of the country (SANS: Critical infrastructure protection). Economy of countries adopting a computerized critical infrastructure relies on cyber-supported infrastructures, enabling hackers to attack on the information systems and the infrastructure to damage the economy and military st rength (SANS: Critical infrastructure protection). Thousands of new cyber attacks categorized with ‘Major’ and ‘Minor’ are penetrated on the Internet daily. The focus is the power sector of the United States including websites of Poland, South Korea and United Kingdom. They all have witnessed cyber attacks in past few months. Different schools in various states of America have lost millions of fraudulent wire transfers (Shackelford, 2010). Cyber attacks are intelligent as well as organized. Once the network is hacked, they install small lop holes or software intruders for giving hackers access whenever they want to access the network again. In simple words, one can say that, it is a computer-to-computer attack to steal the confidential information, integrity or the data presently available on the network. The attack adopts a calculated approach to modify action against data, software and hardware in both computers and networks (Denning & Denning, 2010). It is essential to define a solid network defense for handling cyber attacks. The government or the private sector could operate it, both Networks provide opportunities for hackers to intrude the destination remotely and take control of the capabilities and resources these devices has. The impact of hacking in these systems is devastating. For example, hackers may gain access to the military radar systems, credit card data stolen, data stolen from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has revealed secret agents, and now their life is at risk etc. The capacity of these attacks impact on the country’s economy, security and financial stability. They breach government networks that are directly related to national services. ‘Stuxnet’ The most destructive virus or worm was discovered in June 2010 named as ‘Stuxnet’. It was classified as a ‘worm’. Network dictionary provides a comprehensive definition of a ‘worm’ that states as à ¢â‚¬Å"A destructive program that replicates itself throughout a single computer or across a network, both wired and wireless. It can do damage by sheer reproduction, consuming internal disk and memory resources within a single computer or by exhausting network bandwidth. It can also deposit a Trojan that turns a computer into a zombie for spam and other malicious purposes. Very often, the terms "worm" and "virus" are used synonymously; however, worm implies an automatic method for reproducing