Iran confirms Stuxnet worm hit nuclear plant

Iranian sources appear to have confirmed that the Stuxnet worm has infected PCs at the country's Bushehr nuclear power facility, but maintain that it has not disrupted the plant's operations.

First discovered in July, the sophisticated Stuxnet threat has been designed to disrupt the supervisory control and data acquisition systems that control manufacturing processes in factories and plants around the world.

Bushehr project manager Mahmoud Jaafari told Iran's Islam Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Sunday that some of the personal computers belonging to employees had been hit by the virus, but that fixes were being applied to remove the infections.

In a harder line response on the English language version of the IRNA site later in the day, M. Zarean, deputy chairman of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation for Safety, Protection and Security, claimed that the worm had "not hit Iran's nuclear site or software".

Iran's Mehr news agency reported on Saturday that Stuxnet had infected "the IP addresses of 30,000 industrial computer systems" in the country, although it declined to be more specific about the incident at Bushehr.

Security vendor Symantec said last week that the majority of Stuxnet incidents are at Iranian IP addresses, and that the sophistication and time taken to craft the worm indicates that it is likely to have come from a state-sponsored source.