Computer virus briefly hits Iran’s oil industry

Iran’s key oil industry was briefly affected by the powerful computer virus known as “Flame” that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users, a senior Iranian military official announced today. The comment is the first direct link between the emergence of the new malware and an attack inside a highly sensitive computer system in Iran, which counts on oil revenue for 80% of its income. The full extent of last month’s disruptions has not been given, but Iran was forced to cut Internet links to the country’s main oil export terminal, presumably to try to contain the virus. It would be the latest high-profile virus to penetrate Iran’s computer defenses in the past two years, boosting speculation that Israeli programmers could have struck again. Experts see technological links between Flame and the highly focused Stuxnet virus, which was tailored to disrupt Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in 2010. Many suspect Stuxnet was the work of Israeli intelligence. Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of fighting sabotage, claims that Iranian experts detected and defeated the “Flame” virus. He tells state radio that the oil industry was the only governmental body seriously affected and that all data that had been lost has been retrieved. “This virus penetrated some fields. One of them was the oil sector. Fortunately, we detected and controlled this single incident,” Jalali says. The Associated Press has the full story here.