Andy, the Financial Times reports Iran nuclear scientists have confirmed their program is being affected by the Stuxnet bug, affecting 30,000 computers and leaving many to speculate whether the U.S. was behind the attack
Mahmoud Jafari, head of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, said the Stuxnet worm had only affected staff computers rather than the system running the reactor itself.
“A team is inspecting several computers to remove the malware … Major systems of the plant have not been damaged,” he told the official IRNA news agency.
But Iran’s state-run Mehr news agency reported that the IP addresses of 30,000 computer systems infected by the worm had also been detected.
Stuxnet, the first program designed to cause serious damage in the physical world, has hit an unknown number of power plants, pipelines and factories over the past year.
Since Iran has suffered most of the infections, questions have been raised about whether the virus is connected to western governments’ top secret sabotage campaign against Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Ashgear Zarean, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, insisted that precautions had prevented the worm from hitting Bushehr.
“It is expected that the vigilance and skills of Iranian experts would once again thwart the cyber-warfare of the enemies,” he said.
More here (behind a paywall).