Iran accuses Siemens over Stuxnet cyber worm

IRAN HAS ACCUSED the German engineering firm Siemens of working in cahoots with the US and Israel to create of the Stuxnet worm, which is believed to have hit its nuclear facilities.

Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran's civilian defence, said that Siemens should be held responsible. He said that the Stuxnet worm was specifically designed to hit Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, which monitors Iran's nuclear industrial processes.

Jalali said, "The Siemens company must be held accountable and explain how and why it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of SCADA software and paved the way for a cyber attack against us."

Stuxnet is a revolutionary Windows worm that can spread through to computers and networks via USB sticks, but it only affects systems with specific configurations. If there is no Siemens SCADA software present, the worm shuts itself down and erases itself.

But if it detects Siemens SCADA software, then Stuxnet gets busy attacking Windows systems with a series of zero-day attacks and spreading through private networks, although not through the Internet.

The technologically sophisticated nature of the worm and its suspected targeting of Iran led to widespread belief that the US and Israel were responsible, looking to shut down or cause damage to an Iranian nuclear program. µ