Stuxnet.

A highly sophisticated 2010 worm that sabotaged Iran's uranium-enrichment centrifuges by reprogramming Siemens PLCs, widely attributed to the United States and Israel. It belongs to the OT / ICS / IoT category of cybersecurity.

A highly sophisticated 2010 worm that sabotaged Iran's uranium-enrichment centrifuges by reprogramming Siemens PLCs, widely attributed to the United States and Israel.

Stuxnet is the canonical example of an ICS cyber-weapon: a worm publicly disclosed in 2010 and widely attributed to the U.S.-Israeli "Olympic Games" program. It targeted Siemens S7-300/S7-400 PLCs at Iran's Natanz uranium-enrichment facility, manipulating variable-frequency drive set-points to damage centrifuges while replaying normal data to operators. It used at least four Windows zero-days, stolen Realtek and JMicron code-signing certificates, USB-based propagation, and a tightly targeted payload that only activated against specific PLC programs and hardware. Stuxnet proved that purely digital code could cause physical destruction and reshaped the field of OT security, inspiring defensive standards such as IEC 62443 and a new generation of ICS threat research.

Defences for Stuxnet typically combine technical controls and operational practices, as detailed in the full definition above.

Common alternative names include: Stuxnet worm, Olympic Games (operation).