The Stuxnet worm, a form of malware, was likely created by a government

LONDON, United Kingdom — In June 2009, someone somewhere quietly released a computer virus called Stuxnet. It was rather large for a virus, but no one noticed as it slipped into cyberspace and began infecting its way around the world.
One year later, the virus — or worm, as programmers call this strain of invasive software — did something in Iran. It’s not clear what it did, but this time, a lot of people noticed. Because Stuxnet, they say, changes everything.
Iranian officials have decried Stuxnet as an act of “computer terrorism” perpetrated by the “domineering powers.” They could be right, say experts who believe the worm’s potency and sophistication point to a possible state-sponsored cyber attack and perhaps a new era of warfare.
“In terms of preparation, planning and organization, Stuxnet is completely unparalleled to anything we’ve seen before,” Roel Schouwenberg, a Boston-based researcher for Russian internet security company Kaspersky Lab, told GlobalPost.

(Continued)