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

by Kim Zetter

Workers at other companies chimed in to say that they, too, were having the same problem. One user, who also wrote that all of the PCs at his company were infected, said the problem appeared to be confined to Iran. “[B]ecause you can see many people in Iran [on the forum] have the same problem from at least 1 [month] ago,” he wrote. The discussion continued throughout July, with Behrooz so frustrated at times that he ended some of his messages with an angry, red-faced emoticon. Then suddenly, on July 24, he posted a message saying finally the mystery had been solved. He included a link to a news article about Stuxnet, which had recently been publicly exposed, and ended his message with three grinning emoticons. Of course it would be several more months before he and the rest of the world learned what it was targeting.