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ellen_messmer
Senior Editor, Network World

Stuxnet could have caused ‘new Chernobyl,’ Russian ambassador says

News
Jan 27, 20111 min
CybercrimeData and Information SecurityInternet Security

The Stuxnet worm attack known to have struck computers at the Russian-built Iranian Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran has serious implications and could have caused "another Chernobyl," a Russian ambassador is said to have advised NATO yesterday, according to a Reuters report.

The Stuxnet worm attack known to have struck computers at the Russian-built Iranian Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran has serious implications and could have caused “another Chernobyl,” a Russian ambassador is said to have advised NATO yesterday, according to a Reuters report.

The Reuters report says Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, called the Stuxnet virus “very toxic, very dangerous” and said it had caused centrifuges to spin out of control and was dangerous enough to have possibly caused “a new Chernobyl,” an allusion to the devastating nuclear-plant accident in the mid-1980s in Ukraine.

Is Stuxnet an Israeli-invented attack against Iran?

According to Reuters, Russian ambassador Rogozin said NATO should be investigating the Stuxnet matter.

Security experts have spent considerable time examining Stuxnet code, with many regarding it as weaponized malware that was likely used by an enemy of Iran to slow down development of Iran’s nuclear program, with some believing that Israel or the U.S. or both having had a stealthy hand in Stuxnet’s creation as malware targeted Iran industrial control systems in the plant..

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