Iran’s national Mehr news agency has revealed that the country has arrested several people suspected of allowing the Stuxnet worm to access its Bushehr nuclear facility’s command and control systems.
The Stuxnet malware, which is designed to attack Siemens industrial systems, compromised computers at the plant last week.
A report in the New York Times quotes Iran’s intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi as saying: “All of the destructive activities perpetrated by the oppressors in cyber space will be discovered quickly and means of combating these plans will be implemented.”
Moslehi claims that Iran is able to deal with any online attacks by “enemy spy services”.
Officials at the Bushehr plant claim that no major systems were affected by the attack.
While attention has centred on Iran, Stuxnet is still affecting other industrial systems worldwide.
According to data collected by Kaspersky Lab, India is the worst affected country, suffering 8,000 infections in the first five days of Stuxnet’s lifetime, compared with 3,000 in Iran.
Experts are now linking the failure of India’s INSAT 4B satellite with the Stuxnet worm.