Science and Health

Iran: Siemens behind Stuxnet cyber attack

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-04-17 17:14

TEHRAN - A senior Iranian official said the German engineering conglomerate Siemens should be held responsible for the infection of Iranian industrial sites by the Stuxnet computer worm, the English language Tehran Times reported on Sunday.

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"Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software (which is used at some of Iran's major industrial sites) and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us," said Gholam-Reza Jalali, director of Iran's Passive Defense Organization, on Saturday.

Iranian officials should lodge a complaint against Siemens, he was quoted as saying.

"The investigations and research showed that the Stuxnet worm had been disseminated from sources in the US and Israel," he added, calling on Iran's Foreign Ministry to take legal action against the countries which organized the cyber attack against Iran.

Earlier in September, the Islamic Republic said that the computer worm infected 30,000 IP addresses in Iran but Iranian Foreign Ministry denied reports that a cyber worm had damaged computer systems at the country's nuclear power plant.

Stuxnet is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems. It is specifically written to attack SCADA systems which are used to control and monitor industrial processes.