[justaguyhere]

This driver was digitally signed by Realtek, which means that the authors of the worm were somehow able to break into the most secure location in a huge Taiwanese company, and steal the most secret key that this company owns, without Realtek finding out about it.

In addition to everything else it’s doing, the worm is now playing us back a 21-second data recording on our computer screens that it captured when the centrifuges were working normally.

Wow, that was a fascinating read. The amount of resources and the level of sophistication is mind boggling. Somehow it feels like the finest brains alive are either working on making more deadlier weapons or on thwarting other people's efforts in making them.

[howard941]

The Realtek credentials were stolen long ago+. It's puzzling why they're still being honored.

+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#Windows_infection

[onetimemanytime]

It is but Stuxnet is in the wrong Quora "What is the most sophisticated piece of software/code ever written?" Stuxnet is superb and complicated BUT only because it had several nation states behind it and that data was used by its creators. Nation states have essentially unlimited money and other ways that no one can match (sharing of info, freeing of spies, letting you get away with murder, $100m in a bank account, new identity etc etc.)

I am not convinced that Stuxnet is more complicated than, say Excel, Windows, Android or a hedge fund's trading platform.

[hguant]

Complicated and sophisticated are not synonyms.