Iranian Nuclear Site Safe From Virus Attack

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoun Abbasi has rejected media reports claiming that a new malware has attacked the country’s nuclear installations in Natanz which hosts enrichment facilities.
“It’s not true and we are doing our normal job,” Abbasi told Fars News Agency on Wednesday when asked about the media reports that a new cyber attack targeting Natanz.
“We are generally carrying out our specialized tasks,” he added. Iranian officials have on many occasions announced that Iran has successfully repelled all cyber attacks against the country’s infrastructures, including nuclear facilities.
Minister of Communication and Information Technology Reza Taqipour said in July that in some days, Iran was targeted by two million cyber attacks, but could confront and repel all these malware attacks.
Earlier, western experts said that a US cyber war against Iran’s nuclear program may have only just begun and could escalate with explosions triggered by digital sabotage.
Although the Iranian government has foiled several cyber attacks in the aftermath of the ‘Stuxnet’ worm that sought to disrupt its uranium enrichment work, Tehran may need to intensify its measures for its digital security, some analysts said.
Analysts believe that Tehran will come under intensified digital assaults by the US and Israel.
The US, which masterminded the Stuxnet operation along with Israel, has every incentive to press ahead with a cyber campaign to undermine Iran’s atomic ambitions, according to analysts.
The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed ‘Flame’ that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s nuclear program, western officials told the US daily, Washington Post late in June.
The US and Israel’s sabotage act faced with Iran’s prompt action. Iran declared late in May that it has produced an anti-virus program against ‘Flame’.
Stuxnet was designed to damage Iran’s nuclear sites, specially Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Iran’s National Computer Emergency Response Team said it has developed tools to detect and remove Flame from infected computers.
The US and Israel have made repeated attempts in the last several years to damage Iran’s nuclear and industrial sites through web infiltration and computer malwares.
Computers of some Iranian nuclear sites were attacked by the Stuxnet virus, the first known computer worm discovered in 2010 to target industrial controls.