While it has been disturbing to see Internet threats become driven by financial gain, signals the arrival of something more worrisome: a new class of threat designed to seize and control critical infrastructure.

Stuxnet is one of the most complex threats observed to date. Not only did it utilize interesting antivirus evasion techniques and complex process injection code, it also pioneered new frontiers in virus design, including the use of four separate vulnerabilities and the first ever rootkit designed specifically for programmable logic controller systems.

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Most notably, however, is the fact that it was -- computer programs used to manage industrial environments such as power plants, oil refineries and gas pipelines. It is the first known designed to specifically target such systems with the goal of impacting real-world equipment and processes.

Stuxnet's ultimate objective was to alter the speed at which certain frequency converter drives -- power supplies that control the rotational speed of electric motors -- operated. Stuxnet only targeted systems with drives that functioned at a certain frequency, most notably, . Altering the frequencies of the drives, as Stuxnet is designed to do, will effectively sabotage the enrichment procedure, likely damaging the affected centrifuges in the process.