Named after signatures buried in its code, here are some of their biggest breaks on the Stuxnet case.
2008 and 2009: Computer security firms detect on the internet what later turn out to be components of the full blown Stuxnet virus.
June 2010: A little-known Belarussian security firm reports the first sighting of Stuxnet on the computers of an Iranian customer.
July 2010: Microsoft warns customers of that Stuxnet is able to exploit security vulnerabilities in Windows.
July 2010: Siemens, a maker of industrial control systems in utility plants and factories, meanwhile tells its customers that once inside a Windows system, the virus takes contols of equipment, and issues a tool to remove it.
September 2010: German researchers are first to suggest the attack is specifically targeted at Iran's nuclear enrichment programme.
September 2010: Microsoft releases a Windows software patch to fix the vulnerability exploited by Stuxnet.
November 2010: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirms Stuxnet had an impact at Natanz, Iran nuclear enrichment site. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," he said.
December 2010: The Institute for Science and International Security confirms that Stuxnet works by making subtle, but damaging adjustments to the speed at which uranium centrifuges spin and suggests it may have destroyed up to 1,000 at Natanz.
January 2011: The New York Times reports unnamed intelligence sources claiming Stuxnet was a joint American-Israeli operation.
Shane Richmond
Shane Richmond
Shane Richmond
Shane Richmond
Shane Richmond
Shane Richmond