Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

by Kim Zetter

As the sedan approached a busy intersection, assailants on a motorcycle suddenly pulled alongside Shahriari’s vehicle and brazenly slapped a “sticky” bomb to the driver’s-side door. Seconds after they zipped away, the bomb exploded, shattering the car’s rear window and leaving the driver’s-side door a twisted mess of molten metal. Shahriari was instantly killed; his wife and bodyguard were injured, though spared. A small pit in the asphalt next to the car testified to the force of the blast.7 Not long after, in another part of the city, Fereydoon Abbasi, a fifty-two-year-old expert in nuclear isotope separation, was also making his way through traffic toward the same destination, when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a motorcycle approaching. A second later he heard the distinctive sound of something being attached to his door. Abbasi was a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, so his defensive instincts were more honed than Shahriari’s. He quickly leapt from the car and pulled his wife from her seat. Although the two were injured when the bomb exploded, both of them survived the attack. News reports indicated the two scientists were targeted for their prominent roles in Iran’s nuclear program. “They’re bad people,” an unnamed US official said afterward, “and the work they do is exactly what you need to design a bomb.”8