Cyber attack on Iran expands: Tehran threatens long-term war in reprisal

Monday, Sept. 27 it was under full-scale cyber terror attack. The official IRNA news agency quoted Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's government Information Technology Company, as saying that the Stuxnet computer worm "is mutating and wreaking further havoc on computerized industrial equipment."

Stuxnet was no normal worm, he said: "The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading."

Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Hossein Salami declared his force had all the defensive structures for fighting a long-term war against "the biggest and most powerful enemies" and was ready to defend the revolution with more advanced weapons than the past. He stressed that defense systems have been designed for all points of the country, and a special plan devised for the Bushehr nuclear power plant. debkafile's military sources report that this indicates that the plant - and probably other nuclear facilities too - had been infected, although Iranian officials have insisted it has not, only the personal computers of its staff.

The Stuxnet spy worm has been created in line with the West's electronic warfare against Iran," said Mahmoud Liayi, secretary of the information technology council of the Industries Minister.

As for the origin of the Stuxnet attack, Hamid Alipour said: The hackers who enjoy "huge investments" from a series of foreign countries or organizations, designed the worm, which has affected at least 30,000 Iranian addresses, to exploit five different security vulnerabilities. This confirmed the impressions of Western experts that Stuxnet invaded Iran's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems through "zero-day" access.

Alipour added the malware, the first known worm to target large-scale systems and industrial complexes control systems, is also a serious threat to personal computers.

debkafile's Iranian and intelligence sources report that these statements are preparing the ground for Tehran to go beyond condemning the states or intelligence bodies alleged to have sponsored the cyber attack on Iranian infrastructure and military industries and retaliate against them militarily. Iran is acting in the role of victim of unprovoked, full-scale, cyber terror aggression.