Apr 26, 2011 17:00 GMT  ·  By

Iranian officials are reporting that government systems have come under attack from a new computer worm, which follows last year's Stuxnet incident.

The announcement was made by Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, the leader of Iran's Passive Defense Organisation, a military unit responsible for defending the country's nuclear facilities.

According to the Iranian Mehr news agency, the country's computer experts are still analyzing the malware which for an yet-unknown reason was dubbed Stars.

"Certain characteristics about the Stars worm have been identified, including that it is compatible with the [targeted] system and that the damage is very slight in the initial stage, and it is likely to be mistaken for executable files of the government," Jalali told Mehr.

He added that procedures for dealing with the new threat are being developed, but didn't offer details about what systems are being targeted or how widespread is the problem.

Jalali generated news headlines two weeks ago when he publicly accused Siemens of participating in the creation of the infamous Stuxnet industrial sabotage worm that attacked Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Iranian official said at the time that Siemens provided the suspected Stuxnet creators, the United States and Israel, with the code necessary to find vulnerabilities in its software that were later exploited by the malware.

Iran's official position regarding Stuxnet is that it failed to seriously impact its nuclear program, despite claims to the contrary made by retiring Mossad chief Meir Dagan and some international organizations.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) wrote in a report that Stuxnet likely damaged up to 1,000 IR-1 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.

"[...] The country should prepare itself to tackle future worms since future worms, which may infect our systems, could be more dangerous than the first ones," Jalali warned.