Iran: Zionist regime, US behind Stuxnet

A senior Iranian official says the US and Zionist Israel tried to damage Iran’s “nuclear infrastructure” by the Stuxnet malware, but the Islamic Republic foiled their plot.

Iran has successfully thwarted the US and Zionist Israeli orchestrated Stuxnet malware attack which also targeted its industrial facilities, says the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization.

“The Stuxnet malware attack on the Iranian industrial facilities constituted the world’s first cyber attack, which Iran successfully identified and countered,” IRNA quoted Brigadier General Gholam-Reza Jalali on Thursday.

Through unleashing the Stuxnet cyber assault on Iran “the US and the Zionist regime were seeking to attack one of the main infrastructures of the country in its nuclear realm,” he noted.

The top military official went on to say that following the cyber attack, Iran deployed “all of its internal capacity” to detect and destroy the virus.

He further outlined some of the short term measures carried out by Iran in the face of the attack, such as holding educational workshops on the virus, case by case investigation of high profile facilities, and conducting penetration testing in some organizations.

“One of the long term measures pursued in Iran’s industrial sector is the domestic and safe production of the information technology industry in the country,” he added.

Stuxnet, first indentified by Iranian officials in June, is a malware designed to infect computers using German industrial Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) — a control system favored by industries that manage water supplies, oilrigs, and power plants.

In July, media reports claimed that Stuxnet had targeted industrial computers around the globe with Iran being the main target of the attack. They said the country’s newly launched Bushehr power plant was at the center of the cyber attack.

However, Iranian experts detected the worm in time, averting any damage to the country’s industrial sites and resources.