Iran urged to come clean on computer virus

IRAN was urged yesterday to reveal more information about a new computer virus that the regime says has hit the country less than a year after its nuclear program was attacked by the Stuxnet cyberworm.

Western experts were wary about whether the claim about the so-called Stars virus was a hoax designed for domestic consumption or a genuine attack that could cause harm to other networks across the world.

A senior Iranian military official said on Monday Iran had been attacked by an "espionage virus".

"The Stars virus has been presented to the laboratory but is still being investigated," Gholam Reza Jalali, the head of the Iranian military unit in charge of combating sabotage, said. "No definite and final conclusions have been reached."

John Bassett, a British cyber security expert at the Royal US Institute, said that the recent unrest in the Middle East and North Africa might have prompted Tehran to fabricate or exaggerate the virus to alarm its own people.

"In the past when the regime has felt under pressure there have been wild claims about Western plots that appear to have been aimed at rallying domestic support," he said. "This would, I believe, be the first use of allegations of a cyber-plot for domestic political purposes."

If the malware was real, however, Mr Bassett said that the Iranian government had a responsibility to reveal as much detail as possible to enable anti-virus companies to develop countermeasures.

Stuxnet, the world's most sophisticated cyberweapon, which is suspected of having been designed by US and Israeli specialists, infected systems outside Iran, as well as the country's uranium enrichment facilities at its Natanz nuclear plant.

Orla Cox, the security operations manager at a response centre run by Symantec, the internet security specialists, said there was no evidence to suggest that the latest attack on Iran, if confirmed, was on the same level as Stuxnet.

"I think it is likely that they were the victim of some sort of infection but it is likely not something special," she said.

The Times