Iran´s main nuclear powerplant...
CNN reports 24 Sept. 2010.
A piece of highly sophisticated malicious software that has infected an unknown number of power plants, pipelines and factories over the past year is the first program designed to cause serious damage in the physical world, security experts are warning.
At a closed-door conference this week in Maryland, Ralph Langner, a German industrial controls safety expert, said Stuxnet might be targeting not a sector but perhaps only one plant, and he speculated that it could be a controversial nuclear facility in Iran.
According to Symantec, which has been investigating the virus and plans to publish details of the rogue commands on Wednesday, Iran has had far more infections than any other country.
September 25, 2010 : US, Israel behind cyber-attack on Iran?
Experts say a computer worm that has targeted Iran's industrial sites may be part of a cyber-attack by the US or Israel against the Islamic Republic.
The Stuxnet, a computer worm that is viewed as potentially the most dangerous piece of computer malware discovered, has targeted industrial computers in Iran.
The complex worm recognizes a specific facility's control network and then destroys it.
Experts say the worm, which has a very sophisticated design, may have been created by a state-sponsored organization in the US or Israel to target specific control software being used in the Iranian industrial sector, including the Bushehr plant -- Iran's first nuclear power plant.
"All the details so far to me scream that this was created by a nation-state," Bloomberg quoted Frank Rieger, technology chief for a maker of encrypted mobile phones, as saying.
Iran's nuclear facilities may have been the targets, said both Rieger and Richard Falkenrath of the Chertoff Group, a Washington-based security advisory firm.
"It is theoretically possible that the US government did this," Falkenrath said during an interview with Bloomberg Television on Saturday. "But in my judgment, that's a very remote possibility. It's more likely that Israel did it."
Meanwhile, a top US cyber-security official claims that the US does not know who is behind the cyber-attack and is still analyzing the worm.
"We've conducted analysis on the software itself," Sean McGurk, director of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, told reporters on Friday.
"It's very difficult to say 'This is what it was targeted to do,'" he said, adding the center was not looking for those behind the attack but it rather sought to prevent the spread.
The US and Israel accuse Iran of developing a nuclear weapons program. Iran rejects the allegation, saying its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, in its several reports, has confirmed that it continues to verify the country's non-diversion from its peaceful path.
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