An Iranian security guard outside the reactor building at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which has been hit with a Stuxnet computer worm attack.
Posted on 09/27/2010 11:13:16 AM PDT by JoeProBono
Iran is going nuclear over a malicious computer worm targeting the country's atomic energy facilities.
The Stuxnet worm has targeted not only Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant -- scheduled to go online in a matter of weeks -- but also the personal computers of the government's nuclear officials, the country's national news agency reports.
Iran has not yet publically pointed blame to the West, but several Internet security experts publicly stated that they suspect that a hostile government such as the U.S. or Israel may be behind the cyberattack.
"This would not be easy for a normal group to put together," Liam O Murchu, manager of security response operations at Symantec, told the Press Association. "It was either a well-funded private entity [or it was] a government agency or state-sponsored project."
Iranian officials said Sunday that the worm had not yet infected major systems at the plant -- the centerpiece of the country's controversial nuclear program.
"The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading," the IRNA agency reported Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's Information Technology Company, as saying.
The Stuxnet worm, discovered in July, targets systems made by Siemens AG, which are commonly used in industrial plants and power grids around the world. A majority of the documented Stuxnet attacks, however, have been on Iranian computers, Forbes' Medialand blog reported.
An Iranian security guard outside the reactor building at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which has been hit with a Stuxnet computer worm attack.
This is just awesome.
Guess that depends on how you define hostile
Well, I certainly hope so.
Gasp - really? I’m SHOCKED! NOT. Doesn’t even scratch the surface of current CNA capabilities.
Colonel, USAFR
My guess is the Israelis. At least they are not sitting around dithering.
I have seen this “majority” statement from several sources. So is there any other system outside of Iran that is afflicted? Is it a 100-0 majority?
Another reliable observation by Iranians.
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