Stuxnet

Security and privacy

malware reverse engineering

SHOW HN2026

179points
51comments
#338of 4,366 in 2026
Top 8%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

3 positive, 14 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 11 critical, out of 28 comments about the project. Thread score -0.16.

Execution: 0 for, 10 againstIdea: 2 for, 0 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Readable code is a point of pride for the maker

    From 1 comment
    • Thanks,providing readable code for everyone is inherently a thing of pride.
      CMDDestory on HN
  • Interesting and important piece of software

    From 1 comment
    • This is amazingly awesome. Very intriguing and what a great idea in the first place. One of the most important pieces of modern software IMO.
      fathermarz on HN

Objections

  • Code appears to be LLM-generated slop, not the real malware

    From 3 comments
    • This looks like slop, it's all concatenated into a single file and most probably not based on the actual malware. I'm fairly sure that for example the real one does not include…
      rep_lodsb on HN
    • And the Wikipedia article explains where the name came from, a combination of ".stub" and "mrxnet.sys". Not one literal string as it appears several times in this purported…
      rep_lodsb on HN
    • Yeah... you've convinced me. An reverse engineering LLM should/would never invent literal strings in the code.
      qarl on HN
  • Literal strings like registry keys do not match the original binary

    From 2 comments
    • But then did it hallucinate that registry key? Or this? ``` "instance of ActiveScriptEventConsumer as $Consumer\n" "{\n" " Name = \"StuxnetConsumer\";\n" " ScriptingEngine =…
      rep_lodsb on HN
    • And the Wikipedia article explains where the name came from, a combination of ".stub" and "mrxnet.sys". Not one literal string as it appears several times in this purported…
      rep_lodsb on HN
  • Poor navigation, code concatenated into one file

    From 2 comments
    • If you're going to spend tokens on the RE for this, it would've been nice to spend some tokens documenting it or making it easier to navigate
      broodbucket on HN
    • This looks like slop, it's all concatenated into a single file and most probably not based on the actual malware. I'm fairly sure that for example the real one does not include…
      rep_lodsb on HN

Requests

  • Split code into modules and add documentation

    From 2 comments
    • If you're using coding agents for this, it may be worth splitting this up into multiple well arranged modules that tell a coherent story and make it easy to browse, and add…
      joshka on HN
    • If you're going to spend tokens on the RE for this, it would've been nice to spend some tokens documenting it or making it easier to navigate
      broodbucket on HN

Questions

  • Where did the original binaries come from?

    From 2 comments
    • Where did the binaries come from? Did Iran release them?
      tehjoker on HN
    • From what I recall reading, stuxnet itself was found in the wild. Even though it was certainly created for a specific target. That’s how security researchers were able to study…
      nirav72 on HN
  • What binary was the starting point?

    From 1 comment

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

Add a badge to your READMEShown on HackerShow
[![Shown on HackerShow](https://hackershow.org/badge.svg)](https://hackershow.org/show/49603546)