Russia: Iran N-plant immune to Stuxnet

Bushehr nuclear power plant

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/160651.html


Russia's nuclear agency Rosatom has rejected media reports that the computer virus Stuxnet has impacted Iran's nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr.

"There are no viruses in the power plant's computer network, especially in units responsible for security, because this network is totally autonomous and isolated from external sources," Xinhua quoted Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov as saying on Monday.

His remarks came after Western media outlets claimed on January 17 that the computer bug had caused "enormous damage" to the Bushehr reactor.

Novikov stressed that the virus could not break into the automatic control system of the plant and endanger the reactor control.

Stuxnet, first indentified by Iranian officials in June, is a malware designed to infect computers using German industrial Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) -- a control system favored by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs, and power plants.

In July, media reports claims that Stuxnet had targeted industrial computers around the globe with Iran being the main target of the attack. They said the country's newly launched Bushehr power plant was at the center of the cyber attack.

The US and Israel have claimed that their efforts to develop the destructive computer virus have dealt a blow to Iran's nuclear program.

Iranian officials, however, have strongly dismissed such claims, saying that Stuxnet was detected early by Iranian experts and thus caused no damage to the country's industrial sites.