No, iirc stuxnet spread itself without anyone physically leaving a USB stick anywhere. On a system infected via the network, it would try to infect any USB drives connected to the system.

Stuxnet is fascinating. Still, as far as I can tell, the most complex, interesting malware ever found in the wild. I believe it's unclear how stuxnet found its way into the enrichment facilities.

It did contain a USB device exploit delivering a dropper with a completely separate payload specifically targeted at the Natanz facility. A compromised USB device picked up in the parking lot would do the trick, but there are certainly other ways to get something through the front door and that information is unlikely to be public knowledge any time soon.

I do remember reading about that. It exploited a bug in windows to load an executable when the usb was plugged in. It then installed a usermode rootkit and hid its files.

I likely got the "parking lot" impression from Alex Gibney's Zero Days, but it's been a few years since that came out.

It probably got in via usb in the parking lot, but there hasn't been an official statement that I know of. It was confirmed that the hack into the DHS intranet was done by USB stick in the parking lot.

Natanz was air gapped. Stuxnet penetrated the facility on a phisical device, once inside it spread over the LAN. The Widespread distribution of it on the open Internet was because of a bug in the code.

> The Widespread distribution of it on the open Internet was because of a bug in the code.

It's presumed that the Israelis got a little bit greedy and, even though it was doing it's job, tried to make the virus do it's job a little better. They made it more virulent which made it spread outside of the systems it was only targeted to spread to.

My understanding is that stuxnet got out of Natanz, by mistake. The world was never supposed to see that code. It was planted inside the Natanz secure perimeter.

Well, certain versions of stuxnet were sent to Natanz suppliers first, and I believe the infection made it out into the world from one of these suppliers, not Natanz itself.

If you lack physical access to the parking lot, the classy way to launch your cyber attack is by miniature trebuchet.