Security professionals fighting Stuxnet can use all the help they can get. Discovered in June by a Belarus antivirus company, Stuxnet is widely regarded as the world’s first publicly known cyber super weapon – a malicious software program that specifically targets industrial systems made by Siemens. In fact, just a few months ago, Stuxnet was discovered to be targeting SCADA systems—critical control systems that run complex infrastructure, such as those that operate transportation systems, water systems, and oil refineries.

Hoping to lend a helping hand, Trend Micro has released Stuxnet Scanner, a tool that administrators can use to scan dozens of computers simultaneously for the malicious worm. So how does this security product work? According to Trend Micro, once installed, “the tool enumerates live IP addresses within the internal network and sends spoofed packets similar to the packets sent by known Stuxnet variants. Any host infected with Stuxnet will respond to this spoofed packet. Through this, network administrators can easily identify which IPs are infected within the network, thereby helping them perform the necessary actions to isolate and clean the said system.”

Better yet, Stuxnet Scanner helps administrators identify infected machines within their own networks even if Stuxnet is not communicating.

That’s good news given the serious ramifications of Stuxnet. Earlier today, a report by The Christian Science Monitor revealed that researchers have discovered that Stuxnet was designed to sabotage special drive motors used almost exclusively in nuclear fuel-refining centrifuge systems. The article suggests that this discovery points to Iran's nuclear centrifuge plants as the likely target.

Worse yet, application security company Imperva expects attacks like the Stuxnet worm to become a key threat in 2011, with malware threats increasing during the year. Techniques from the commercial hacker industry are expected to be developed to create more powerful Advanced Persistent Threats, according to Imperva’s top security trend predictions.

Edited by Juliana Kenny