Stuxnet worm hits industrial systems

Briefing reporers here, Symantec Vice President for India (product operations) Shantanu Ghosh said targeted attack on critical installations such as power grids, gas pipelines and nuclear infrastructure is an entirely new trend.  “This worm is targeted at specific infrastructure in the hope of causing damage to the installation, either making it explode or to sabotage users from getting intended results from it,” he explained.

Critical infrastructures

Stating Symantec has been tracking the worm from June, he said the system was looking for PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), sophisticated machines that run industrial systems such as machines or gas pipes.

Symantec had spoken to 1,580 companies using critical infrastructure across the globe including 150 in India for its study which showed that 43 per cent of them are not surprised by the attack on critical infrastructures.

The study also further showed that only half of companies surveyed in India are prepared to face the attack that the worm would inflict.