ms. zetter, are you a techy? >> guest: no. know i get into tech journalism journalism, not by choice. and then found i really loved it. i don't particularly like gadgets in particular or computers in the sense of taking them apart and programming things like that i love the issues around computers. issues around cybersecurity and privacy issues and civil liberties, those are the things that attracted. >> host: what was it about stuxnet the passage enough to write about? >> guest: it was multifaceted. it wasn't a simple worm and it wasn't a simple attack and was unlike anything we've seen before. it was just multiple ways of approaching this story and coming added that really fascinated me. i was also fascinated by the opportunity to finally tell the story of the security researchers. i've been reporting on the work security researchers do for over a decade and i think they are brilliant. i have wanted to showcase that work and the skills required to really, this was a mystery, and they had to take it apart bit by bit and to take months before they fully understand what was going to so

ms. zetter, what is or what was stuxnet? >> guest: stuxnet was a virus/worm that was used to attack iran's nuclear plant, and uranium enrichment plant. so the worm was designed to manipulate the computers that control the centrifuges and speed them up and slowed them down in order to degrade the level of uranium enrichment and also to be somewhere enter on the centrifuges and destroy them. >> host: what was unique about the stuxnet? >> guest: the stuxnet was sophisticated. first of all i guess most unique thing is that this was a virus that was designed to physically destroy something. so in the past we would see malware that would steal passwords and credit card numbers but we've never seemed something designed to physically destroy a century leap out of the digital world into the physical realm and have kinetic activity. that was the first thing that made stuxnet unique. other than that it was sophisticated. it was designed to increase and slow the speed of the centrifuges. while it was doing that it also did this remarkab