Stuxnet was a reckless operation concocted by a small group of American and Israel spies and hackers who thought the whole thing would remain secret forever. T

Stuxnet was a reckless operation concocted by a small group of American and Israel spies and hackers who thought the whole thing would remain secret forever. The recklessness involved setting a precedent by targeting industrial control systems for physical destruction, and also the release of the package to spread over the internet with no external controls. See (May 2021): https://verveindustrial.com/resources/blog/what-is-stuxnet/ https://verveindustrial.com/resources/blog/what-is-stuxnet/ > "This second Stuxnet variant likely did not propagate from an initial infection on a susceptible PLC or controller, but rather gained access to one commodity Windows system through the use of zero-day exploits. From that one infected commodity Windows host, the malware moved laterally from one Windows box to another across the unsegmented network." Once it had been done once, similar attacks followed by other nation-states: > "From a historical perspective, the Stuxnet worm signaled that well-equipped, nation-state-sponsored actors possessed advanced capabilities that would set the stage for more serious cyber-physical attacks such as those in Ukraine, Estonia, and Saudi Arabia." I suppose one positive effect has been the upgrading of security for everything relying on industrial controls systems and PLCs, from nuclear reactors to railways to water supply systems.