Assessing the significance of the 14 zero-day vulnerabilities explained by in proof-of-concept detail with exploit code is incredibly difficult to do, but they offer an unsettling picture of the flaws that seem to exist in systems normally hidden out of sight.

The companies mentioned include Beckhoff, MeasureSoft, Rockwell, Carel, Progea, AzeoTech, and Cogent, products used to control industrial systems across sectors including manufacturing, aerospace, military, and more or less any sector that might use SCADA.

Auriemma has a record of hunting down flaws in SCADA technology, having published 34 zero-day holes in March 2011. He remains unrepentant about his public disclosure of security flaws for which no patches exist.

"I like only to find them [flaws] and releasing the informations (sic) as soon as possible," he explains on his website. "And remember that I find bugs, I don't create them, the developers are the only people who create bugs (indirectly naturally) so they are ever the only responsible."

In the last year SCADA has gone from an obscure albeit important backwater of software security thanks probably to the discovery of , which was apparently deployed to attack systems used within the nuclear programme of Iran over a year period from the summer of 2009 onwards.