This TED video caught our eye over the weekend. If you haven’t seen it, or aren’t familiar with the TED programme, then its well worth a watch. The video is just over 10 minutes in length and explains what Stuxnet is and why it’s so dangerous. As an organisation we don’t believe in using FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) as a marketing vehicle to garner attention. In fact, we go to great lengths to do exactly the opposite – however from time to time something like Stuxnet appears on the scene that gives us new perspective on exactly how exposed we all are to malware and what the potentially catastrophic impact it could have. It’s been our mantra for a while that guaranteed 100% packet capture and analysis in critical infrastructure environments should be mandated. This video makes that point very elegantly and shouldn’t be ignored.

When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its unusually high level of sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. Ralph Langner and team helped crack the code that revealed this digital warhead’s final target — and its covert origins. In a fascinating look inside cyber-forensics, he explains how.

About Ralph Langner

Ralph Langner is a German control system security consultant. He has received worldwide recognition for his analysis of the Stuxnet malware.

An extraordinary article caught our attention from the Chicago Tribune written by By Bill Lambrecht on June 28^th that exposes the scale of the war that American defense contractors are fighting against Cyber Terrorism.

The article intimates that Boeing’s IDS logged 3,722 suspicious efforts to gain access to their systems in just one hour – which by anyone’s standards is a massive number of attacks for any organisation to deal with on a sustained basis.

The article highlights a number of important points about the attacks that are worth noting.