Botnet of 20,000 point-of-sale machines

I understood. My point was that there really was nothing “extremely sophisticated” about Stuxnet’s basic distribution mechanisms. What was relatively sophisticated was its payload – recognizing specific systems that it should attempt to damage rather than simply using them to propagate itself until it reached one or more of those.

In other words: It was a thrown rock that knew enough to bounce off glass harmlessly until it reached the intended windows, and then to damage them in ways that didn’t immediately point to a virus attack. The basic mechanisms of throwing a rock and having it bounce are well known.

Gotcha. Which is scary in that standard virus-protection and IPFW tools seem hopelessly outgunned nowadays. Does this mean we’ll have to deal with a new, even crazier version of John Mcaffee in the future?

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