Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

THE CASE OF STUXNET
In June 2010, a computer virus Stuxnet was believed to be created to attack Iran's 
nuclear facilities. It is widely speculated by media sources that the United States 
and Israel collaborated to facilitate this attack although it has never been officially 
confirmed by either country. This is the first case of publicly known intent of cyber 
warfare. A NATO research team in 2013 agreed that the Stuxnet attack on Iran was 
an “act of force” (
Schmitt, 2013
). The virus included a special malware that specifi-
cally monitors industrial systems whilst doing little harm to computers and networks 
that do not meet its configuration requirements. It is thought that it was designed to 

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The cyber-attacks on banks
destroy nuclear plant machinery and as a result slow or halt the production of Low 
Enriched Uranium.
It is believed that different variations of the virus targeted five Iranian organizations 
including the Natanz nuclear facility (
Zetter, 2010
). Security specialists (Kaspersky, 
Sysmantic, 
Cherry, 2010
; 
Langner, 2011
) believe that due to the complexity of the 
virus implementation and its sophisticated nature, it was more than likely conducted 
with “nation state support.” UK and US media sources (The Guardian, the 
BBC
 and 
The New York Times) also claimed that (unnamed) experts studying Stuxnet believe 
that only a nation-state would have the capabilities to produce it due to the complex-
ity of the code (
Halliday, 2010; Markoff, 2010; Fildes, 2010
).
Borg (2010) of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit stated,
Israel certainly has the ability to create Stuxnet and there is little downside to such 
an attack, because it would be virtually impossible to prove who did it. So a tool 
like Stuxnet is Israel's obvious weapon of choice.