Stuxnet worm rampaging through Iran: IT official

The Stuxnet computer worm has infected 30,000 computers in Iran but has failed to "cause serious damage," Iranian officials were quoted as saying on Sunday.Some 30,000 IP addresses have been infected by Stuxnet so far in Iran, Mahmoud Liayi, head of the information technology council at the ministry of industries, was quoted as saying by the government-run paper Iran Daily.

TEHRAN, Iran — A 6.1 magnitude earthquake killed at least 37 and injured hundreds more in a sparsely populated area in southern Iran on Tuesday, Iranian officials said, adding that it did not damage a nuclear plant in the region. The report said the earthquake struck the town of Kaki some 96 kilometres southeast of Bushehr, a town on the Persian Gulf that is home of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, built with Russian help.

Iran said on Sunday it had found a way to "control" the computer malware Duqu, which is similar to Stuxnet virus which in 2010 attacked its nuclear programme and infected more than 30,000 computers."The software to control the (Duqu) virus has been developed and made available to organisations and corporations" in Iran, head of civil defence Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali told the official IRNA news agency.

Two rebels who were involved in an attack in March which left two members of Iranian security forces dead have themselves been killed, a commander with the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Monday."Two rebels who were involved in the attack on 4 Farvardin (March 25) were killed in the northwest of the country," said General Mohammad Pakpour, without specifying the political affiliation of the two or the circumstances of their deaths, the official IRNA news agency reported.IRNA, however, quoted an unnamed informed source as saying the two were killed on Monday.

Tehran "reserves the right" to attack the bases of an Iranian Kurdish separatist group across the Iraq border, the official IRNA news agency quoted an army official as saying on Monday. "We reserve the right to attack and destroy terrorist bases in border areas" near the autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan, the agency quoted the unnamed senior official as saying."The terrorists will not be allowed to take sanctuary in Iraq's territory and attack Iran with the support of America and the Zionist regime," the official said. "Action will be taken against these terrorists."

The United States and Israel are behind the computer worm Stuxnet designed to hurt Iran's controversial nuclear programme, state news agency IRNA reported Saturday quoting a military officer."Investigations and studies show that the source of Stuxnet originates from America and the Zionist regime," the commander of the Iranian civil defence organisation, Gholam Reza Jalali, said.

Iran's atomic chief has said a small leak in a pool beside the Bushehr reactor has delayed the start-up of the nuclear plant, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.However, Ali Akbar Salehi ruled out any links between the delayed launch and a computer worm which analysts say may have been designed to target the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities."During the washing process a small leak was seen in a pool next to the reactor and it was stopped. The leak delayed activities for a few days," Salehi told IRNA.

A top US cybersecurity official warned on Wednesday that the Stuxnet worm that infiltrated nuclear plants in Iran poses a dangerous new threat to the control systems of critical industries worldwide.Sean McGurk, the acting director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, described Stuxnet in testimony before a US Senate committee as a "game-changer."