Security experts say patterns of activity on the Internet could indicate that a new computer worm is about to attack.
Analysts who have been decoding the computer worm, which is called W32.
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These have included attacking centrifuges at Natanz with the Stuxnet computer worm in 2009, sabotaging imported equipment and disrupting supplies of key materials for manufacturing Iran's IR-1 centrifuges.
The investigation follows publication last week of details of the cyber-sabotage program, including the use of a computer worm called Stuxnet, which Iran has acknowledged it found in its computers.
The U.S. itself has been named in one of the most prominent cyberattacks Stuxnet the computer worm that infiltrated an Iranian nuclear facility, shutting down thousands of centrifuges there in 2010.
Indeed, many already see a low-level "shadow war" under way, with assassinations, terrorism, offensive cyberwarfare (including the use of the Stuxnet computer worm that infected Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities at Natanz), unmanned aerial vehicles and the use of special operations forces widely reported.
In a cunning twist by the virus writers, an e-mail in wide circulation that purportedly offers a "fix" for the Sasser worm actually infects the user's computer with a different virulent worm, known as Netsky-AC.
When the worm infects a computer it sends out the "lol" message to the user's contact list.
In Europe, the computer security company Sophos reported the worm hit all 19 of Britain's Coastguard control centers.
That means there's often much more to do than simply install the patch to both stop the worm and make sure other computer systems are not compromised.
Computer security firms have seen two variants of this worm circulating online.
That, computer experts agree, is because the code for this worm is written very poorly.
Discovered in May, Flame has already been linked to Stuxnet, a worm that attacked Iran's nuclear infrastructure, and Duqu, a data-stealing worm that also infected some of Iran's computer systems.
In January 2003 the Microsoft SQL Server worm, known as Slammer, infected a private computer network at David-Besse nuclear power plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio, disabling a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
While a computer virus requires some sort of human intervention to be launched, such as opening an e-mail, a worm takes off on its own.
The Stuxtnet worm was discovered by researchers in 2010 after it was inadvertently released on the Internet and turned up in computer systems in several countries, including Iran, current and former officials said.
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