It’s hard to imagine a greater crowd and a better organization than at TED. I hadn’t heard about TED before Chris Anderson called to invite me for a talk, but I understood quickly why this venue is sold out months in advance. Besides the opportunity to listen to great talks from movers and shakers, it is virtually impossible to not get involved in conversation with interesting people after one or two minutes. Experiences like ending up in a discussion on Stuxnet with the CEO of one of the biggest software companies in the world who happened to follow our blog closely can probably happen only at TED.

 | ted-review

Contrary to the impression you might get from the comments on my talk, I did not focus on attribution. (After the talk, Chris asked me on stage if Mossad was responsible for Stuxnet.) The talk itself was mainly about cyber forensics – how we discovered that Stuxnet’s goal is Natanz, and only Natanz. At the end I explained how Stuxnet compromises a digital safety system, and the threat that this poses for critical infrastructure in the US, Europe, and Japan.

 | ted-review

Once that the talk is online, don’t be confused when I refer to controllers as “grey boxes” and to the MITM attack as a “reality blocker” – this was for a mostly non-technical audience.

Ralph Langner