So what exactly was the purpose of Stuxnet?
What was it designed to accomplish and did it do what it was supposed to do?
Did it atleast mess up a huge batch of their enriched uranium?
Maybe we need to ask the creators....if we can find them....
If you goof up fluid flow, whether liquid or gaseous, things can get hot and be damaged. Things like the coolant systems of computers and motors and generators that could provide power and control signals to the centrifuges.
The centrifuges themselves just shutoff and slow down if there's trouble. However all of the highly specialized, ain't gonna be on Ebay, support machinery can get damaged and be very hard to replace or repair. Especially in Iran where all nuke-related machinery is embargoed from the only known suppliers.
This article is the best I've read on Stuxnet. It gives Kaspersky's analysis of the worm and why it has been so effective...
Article title: Stuxnet: Prepare for worse in 2011
Kaspersky Lab's analysis of the most serious virus threats of 201 [sic] has put Stuxnet as the most dangerous. According to Kaspersky, Stuxnet was the most complex piece of malware in cybercriminals' arsenal to date. Kaspersky said that an analysis of the worm found that it was designed to change the logic within programmable logic controllers (PLCs) embedded into inverters which are used to control the rotation speed of electric motors. These PLCs operate with very high speed motors that have limited applications, such as those in centrifuges.
"The epidemic also marked the beginning of the era of attacks on industrial targets. The worm is unique in that it uses as many as four zero-day Windows vulnerabilities at the same time in order to infiltrate victim computers, and has a rootkit component signed with certificates stolen from integrated circuit manufacturers, Realtek Semiconductors and JMicron."
The Kaspersky report noted that cybercriminals may have bought these files from insiders or stolen them using a backdoor or some other similar piece of malware. Legitimate signatures are one of the reasons that Stuxnet successfully escaped detection by antivirus programs for quite a long time. Malware signed by valid certificates can easily circumvent even the modern protection mechanisms built into Windows 7, the report warned. Thus, when a signed malicious driver or an ActiveX component is installed on a system, no warning window appears.
"Judging by what we are seeing today, the problem of stolen certificates may become even more significant in 2011," according to Kaspersky Lab's Yury Namestnikov, author of the report 'IT Threat Evolution for Q3-2010'.