"All the industrial computer systems at the reactor are operating
normally and suffered no damage as a result of the virus," Jafari said on
Sept. 26.
Iranian officials have given contradictory accounts of Stuxnet. Some
officials said the government has eliminated the virus while others reported
that at least 30,000 computers in Iran were affected.
Jafari has acknowledged that Stuxnet penetrated the personal computers
of employees at Bushehr. But he said this has not affected plans to begin
reactor operations in October.
But other officials said Stuxnet might have been introduced by a foreign intelligence agency as
early as 2009.
"An electronic war has been launched against Iran," Mahmoud Liai, an
official at the Industry and Mines Ministry, said. "This computer worm is
designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants
to [locations] abroad."
Iran's state-owned news agency, ISNA, reported that leading nuclear
scientists and engineers met in late September to examine the threat. ISNA
said Stuxnet, discovered by Iran in July 2010, has already harmed Iranian
industrial facilities.
Stuxnet was said to have been designed to penetrate and control
Windows-based systems. In what could signal foreign infiltration, the virus
must be installed directly rather than relayed over the Internet.
Stuxnet has also been reported in India and Indonesia. On Sept. 13, the
U.S. company Microsoft warned of Stuxnet, said to employ two stolen security
certificates to penetrate Windows-operated computer networks.
"It's difficult to say with any certainty who is behind it," Rik
Ferguson, a senior security adviser at Trend Micro, told the Qatari
satellite channel A-Jazeera. "There are multiple theories, and in all
honesty, any of them could be correct."
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