Iran finds Duqu-infected systems

An Iranian defence organisation linked to its nuclear programme has said it is fighting Duqu, a piece of espionage malware designed to steal information from industrial control systems.

Iran is in the process of gauging the extent of the infection, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, director of the Passive Defense Organization, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (Inra) on Sunday.

"We are in the initial phase of fighting the Duqu virus," said Jalali, according to Reuters. "The final report which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been completed yet."

Iran has developed antivirus software to counter the effects of Duqu, Jalali told Inra. "The software to control the virus has been developed and made available to organisations and corporations," said Jalali, according to AFP.

The Duqu information-stealing Trojan has been in development since at 2007, security company Kaspersky said in a blog post on Friday.

One organisation was attacked twice in April by hackers trying to access systems, Kaspersky security researcher Alexander Gostev said in a blog post on Friday. The Trojan penetration emails were sent from an IP address in Seoul.

Source code analysis found the code contains a reference to US serial-killer detective TV programme Dexter.

Duqu was reported to a number of security companies, including McAfee and Symantec, by an independent security researcher in October.