Iran has claimed that German engineering company Siemens helped the US and Israel to launch the computer worm Stuxnet against its nuclear facilities.
Reports in Iran quoted Iran civilian defense commander Gholam Reza Jalali as saying that investigations have proved that the US and Israel were behind Stuxnet attack. He added that timely action taken by Iranian experts had averted a nuclear disater in Iran.
Jalali blamed Siemens, whose equipment and software is used in Iran’s nuclear power plants, for leaking information about a Siemens-designed control system, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), to the US and Israel.
He said Siemens must explain how its control systems used to operate Iran’s nuclear plants had been attacked by the worm.
"Our executive officials should legally follow up the case of Siemens SCADA software which prepared the ground for the Stuxnet virus," Jalali said.
"The Siemens company must be held accountable and explain how and why it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of SCADA software and paved the way for a cyber attack against us."
Though Iran’s uranium enrichment programme is known to have been delayed, Iranian officials have denied that the virus, which first appeared in July 2010, caused any major delays to its nuclear power programme. However, in November President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad admitted that the nuclear programme had been affected adding that the problem had been resolved without any serious damage.
The origin of the worm is still unknown.
Both the US and Israel have not denied research claims that the two of them were behind the Stuxnet worm.
Siemens has not commented on the matter so far.
