A high-ranking Iranian official earlier this week admitted publicly that the Stuxnet computer worm has been infiltrating the country's industrial computer systems. Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's Information Technology Co., said that initial estimates that predicted the successful rooting out of virus within one or two months were thwarted by new variants of the elusive malware.

Since the worm was discovered in June, researchers have found 45,000 instances of infected computers spread around the world, though the predominant infection vector appears to have been Iran. While the country maintained that the worm "has not caused any damage to major systems of the plant," experts are still uncertain about the actual payload of the malware.

What is clear from the way it targets computers running a specific industrial control systems software is how the Stuxnet worm is highly unlikely to have been created by mere IT experts or hacking groups. Certainly, the fact that it was not designed to steal money, or steal personal data is additional confirmation of the point.

Eugene Kaspersky, the veteran CEO of the Russian-headquartered IT security vendor bearing his name, observed that the Stuxnet worm represents a new age in cyber warfare. Kaspersky told Infosecurity: "I think that this is the turning point, this is the time when we got to a really new world, because in the past there were just cybercriminals, now I am afraid it is the time of cyberterrorism, cyberweapons and cyberwars."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Washington Post
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at Infosecurity

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