A top expert in protecting industry and infrastructure from cyber-attacks has told the Financial Times that a computer worm which surfaced more than a year ago may well have been a deliberate attempt by the U.S. government to destroy Iran's primary nuclear facility.

The Stuxnet worm has been researched for months, but its design is so complex that security experts are still unable to say definitively who or what it was created to attack.

The worm exploits gaps in Windows operating systems (which Microsoft has since patched) to attack very specific Siemens software used to operate industrial machinery, reports the FT.

Former NATO commander General Wesley Clark has confirmed a "growing number" of severe cyber attacks against US government and commercial installations.
According to Clark, the US currently possesses both the technology and "means" to stop the unrelenting cyber offensive.
General says cyber attacks must be stopped"The job now is to deploy these assets as soon as possible," Clark told an audience of security specialists at the National Press Club.

The pressure sensors contain unique IDs, so merely eavesdropping enabled the researchers to identify and track vehicles remotely. Earlier in the year, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California San Diego showed that the ECUs could be hacked, giving attackers the ability to be both annoying, by enabling wipers or honking the horn, and dangerous, by disabling the brakes or jamming the accelerator. The Rutgers and South Carolina research will be presented at the USENIX Security conference later this week.