Operation Cleaver, 3 Minute Profile

Tarh Andishan (associated names Operation Cleaver) a new kind of cyber warfare? In April 2010, a worm called Stuxnet, allegedly jointly developed by the United States and Israel, targeted Siemens industrial control systems (ICS) in developing nations such as Iran (~59%), Indonesia (~18%), and India (~8%). Stuxnet contained a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit designed to spy upon, subvert, and in some cases sabotage Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that regulated specific industrial systems. In particular, Stuxnet variants were deployed by a nation state actor against Iranian industrial facilities associated with its nuclear program, such as uranium enrichment facilities. The Stuxnet infection was discovered three months later, but variants continued to compromise Iranian systems through 2012. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and its oil and gas infrastructure was also targeted by the Duqu malware from 2009-2011, and the Flame malware in 2012. In response to adversarial cyber campaigns, Iran began rapidly developing its cyber infrastructure.