Iran, however, which experienced 60% of the total damage worldwide, suffered the greatest infiltration by the computer worm. This has led computer and defense analysts to suspect that Iran – and specifically its nuclear plant – was the intended targets of the attacks.

Although Iranian officials admitted on Sunday that the virus, which researchers are calling the most sophisticated “malware” ever, infected some 30,000 computers across the nation, they continue to deny this virtual invasion is the reason for the delay of the launch date.

“The studies show that few PCs of Bushehr nuclear power plant workers are infected with the virus,” Mahmoud Jafari, the facility's project manager, told Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Sunday.

Jafari refuted the claim that the virus had infected “supervisory control and date acquisition” systems or SCADA for short. He also denied that Stuxnet was responsible for delaying the reactor's completion.

“This virus has not caused any damage to the main systems of the Bushehr power plant,” the Iranian project manager said in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam television network.

“All computer programs in the plant are working normally and have not crashed due to Stuxnet,” he added.

However, the IRNA news agency quoted Jafari as saying the worm had infected some “personal computers of the plant’s personnel.” Meanwhile, analysts say Iran was hardest hit by the cyber weapon – possibly the first of its kind in the latest worrisome development on the security front – which has led many to believe that the computer bullet had Iran’s name on it from the beginning.

The Bushehr nuclear power plant, which will eventually generate electricity equal to about 2.5 percent of the country's overall power usage, is considered by some Western countries to be a front for a nuclear weapon’s program. Iran denies the charges, saying it is free to develop alternative sources of energy.

Whatever the intended target of the Stuxnet computer worm, one thing is clear: it is designed – apart from inflicting very real physical harm should it successfully infiltrate a nuclear reactor’s operational computers – to turn up the psychological pressure inside of Iran.

Cyberweapon or PSYOP

“The Iranians are already paranoid about the fact that some of their scientists have defected and several of their secret nuclear sites have been revealed,” one former intelligence official who works on Iran issues was quoted as saying in The New York Times on Wednesday. “Whatever the origin and purpose of Stuxnet, it ramps up the psychological pressure.”

The Stuxnet worm was first discovered by a Belarusian antivirus firm in January. Since then, researchers have been trying to determine if the virus was developed as a “search and destroy” weapon against Iran’s Bushehr plant, or if such claims are just being used in a game of psychological warfare by Iran’s enemies.

According to Computerworld, the Stuxnet virus “used multiple unpatched, or ‘zero-day’, vulnerabilities in Windows; relied on stolen digital certificates to disguise the malware; hid its code by using a rootkit; and reprogrammed PLC (programmable logic control) software to give new instructions to machinery that software managed.”

Although that is heavy talk for the average computer user, the gist of it is that the virus, once it infiltrates a computer system, reprograms the entire complex to essentially self-destruct. But there are some conditions that the Stuxnet bug must pass first.

According to the online computer site, the chances of the virus infiltrating Bushehr’s primary control systems were “quite high” if the power plant used Siemens software, which is interoperable with Windows.

According to Liam O Murchu, the manager of operations for a computer response team and one of the researchers who has been studying Stuxnet since it was first recognized, said there was not enough evidence to conclude that the worm was aimed at Bushehr.

“I've also seen reports [from Iranian officials] that the Bushehr reactor doesn't use Siemens software,” O Murchu, referring to the German electronics giant's control program that Stuxnet specifically targets, told Computerworld. “So if it doesn't use Siemens software, the Windows machines may have been infected but not the SCADA software.”

Whoever or whatever the intended target of the Stuxnet worm was, one thing is for sure: cyberwarfare has arrived with a vengeance.

Robert Bridge, RT