Portrait of a Digital Weapon | The Stuxnet Virus as Art

Portrait of a Digital Weapon - Stuxnet

Portraiture of weapons has been a part of art for as long as there have been armies. While this practice is well established for other traditional weapons, this piece displays the first in a new type of weapon, the nation state cyber attack. When activated, this piece displays the full code of the Stuxnet virus, a worm that partially disabled Iran's nuclear fuel production around 2008.

It's widely believed that the Stuxnet virus was developed by the joint efforts of the US and Israel, and though its effects caused material damage to the industrial equipment being used in Iran. It's the first known case of code being weaponized to destroy physical systems, and constituted a form of covert sabotage that had yet been seen. It was meticulously designed, made to spread via USB drive to overcome the air gap that usually protected these systems. Though it spread quite far, it only activated on system that were attached to certain models of industrial controllers called PLC's. From there it would look for centrifuges used to enrich uranium, and if it found a particular model known to be used in Iran, it would cause the centrifuge to sporadically malfunction to the point where it'd spin out of control and destroy themselves.

In the decade that following its uncovering, these sorts of attacks have become common, with utilities and industrial targets becoming increasingly under threat from malicious actors.

Once that idea was out of the box, there was no putting it back.

2021 - digital print on plastic, custom electronics, antiqued frame, USB drive - 16.75" x 14.5" x 1.5"

You can read more about the explanation and how it was built - Here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Satellite imagery via Sentinel Hub
Decompiled Stuxnet source code via Laurelai on Github