Stuxnet

If you’ve ever seen movies with plotters about hackers, cyber warfare, the NSA, and viruses, we almost always see, for example, the physical destruction of viruses. It can be anything from oily ships to missile defense systems. But we always thought that such existed only in movies.

Until then, Stuxnet appeared. It was like a cartoon villain coming to life. Stuxnet was the first computer virus specifically designed to cause harm in the real world, not the virtual world. As we said, viruses before Stuxnet only caused physical problems indirectly by first creating problems in the virtual world. But Stuxnet? It is designed to target software that controls industrial systems, which can then damage all the machines controlled by those systems.

It was set up to damage Iran’s uranium enrichment plant in Nantanz, and International Atomic Energy Agency data showed that Stuxnet made a large number of Iranian centrifuges insane and self-destructive. Centrifuges are basically giant washing machines used to enrich uranium.

The virus was discovered in 2010, but experts believe it has infected computers in Iran since 2009.

Stuxnet is very complex and has perhaps the most complex code base to date. Experts believe that only nation states can produce such a complex code base because it requires extensive knowledge of industrial processes, intelligent programmers and hackers. Many speculated that the U.S. government and Israel worked together to create Stuxnet.

No matter how true these speculations are, you are probably infected with a virus like Stuxnet. No single hacker or group of hackers is developing something as complex and dangerous as Stuxnet so that it could cost so much money and hours just to move with citizens.

But then for large companies, they may have reason to fear that a similar virus will infect them, because the use of such viruses is very possible in the corporate cyber war.

Conficker virus

Conficker is basically a worm that used vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows to crawl millions of Windows computers around the world.

Unlike other viruses, it does nothing harmful on its own. Instead, it actually created a massive botnet army of remote-controlled computers. These botnets can steal financial information and many other personal information.

But oddly enough, even though the Conficker worm had infected millions of computers, no one really knows what it was meant to do. The Botnet Army was never activated for a specific purpose.

It is a really complicated worm that is very difficult to stop. Heck, Conficker even got an expert coalition formed to prevent the spread. Unfortunately, Conficker still infects a large number of computers in some way, even though Microsoft Windows fixes have been released.

The Conficker virus actually has some versions. The creators updated the virus to make it harder to detect and fix their own vulnerabilities. The self-defense mechanisms of the Conficker virus are incredibly good.

The virus infected not only commercial equipment and individual computers, but also the computers of several public organizations, such as the French Navy, the British Ministry of Defense, the German United Armed Forces.

Thank God the botnet army was never activated! We assume it is still a mystery to all of us. The author of the Conficker virus is never specified.

Agent btz

Because the virus alone launched a new military unit under the U.S. government, it deserves a place on this list. Agent Btz did just that. In fact, it grabbed the entire Pentagon, and they even had to ban flash drives. US. The Cyber ​​Command department was created by Agent Btz.

Military information technology experts discovered the virus on Pentagon computers in 2008 and suspected it was the work of foreign spies. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynne even wrote that agent.btz could create a digital beach header that could transfer data to servers under foreign control.

The mask was quite sophisticated, and it took the Pentagon 14 months to completely clean it of the systems. An organization like the Pentagon has been around for a long time, and it shows how good it was to infect computers.

Although the worm is now obsolete and no new variants have been found, a domestic security ministry official said in a 2011 article that the worm continues to develop and infect computers.