Stuxnet: Apocalypse When? PLCs Run Our Industrial Control Systems -- And Are Frighteningly Vulnerable

Click on the arrow to play, and then be patient; it takes a long time to load.  Follow that red bar passing from left to right across the bottom of the screen; that's loading the video.)

And be afraid; be very afraid.  This virus was apparently ethically aimed at the Iran nuclear development facility.  It got spread to thousands of computers around the world with no harmful effects -- because the worm's creators had a specific target.  Richard Clarke and others say that it must have been propagated by an ethical regime concerned about collateral effects. (Hey, it's a suspected U.S./Israeli collaboration -- strongly denied, of course, by both parties.)  If this worm had been launched by some irresponsible pirate trying to do damage, the results could have been unimaginably catastrophic. 

Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon