The Stuxnet computer worm discovered in June likely was designed to attack and destroy Iran's nuclear centrifuges, U.S. and German researchers say.
Researchers say Stuxnet, the world's first known "cyber missile," was designed to "sabotage special drive motors used almost exclusively in nuclear fuel-refining centrifuge systems" and cause them to explode, The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday.
In separate investigations, research teams in California and Germany reached the same conclusion last week: Nuclear centrifuges were by
far the worm's most likely target.
"Stuxnet changes the output frequencies and thus the speed of the motors for short intervals over periods of months," Symantec researcher Eric Chien reported on his blog Nov. 12. "Interfering
with the speed of the motors sabotages the normal operation of the industrial control process."
Stuxnet "sabotages the system by slowing down or speeding up the motor to different rates at different times," including sending it well
beyond its intended maximum speed, destroying a centrifuge's capacity to produce weapons-grade fuel, the Monitor said.