Intelligence services of Israel and the United States have collaborated in developing a malicious malware known as Stuxnet computer worm aimed at disrupting Iran's nuclear program.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Israel has tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm at its nuclear facility in Dimona complex in the Negev desert before releasing it.
The report quoted intelligence and military experts and officials as saying the effort to create Stuxnet computer worm was a joint US-Israeli project that also involved collaborations by Britain and Germany.
"To check out the worm, you have to know the machines," a US expert told the newspaper.
"The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out," the expert added.
Stuxnet, first indentified by Iranian officials in June, is a malware designed to infect computers using German industrial Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) -- a control system favored by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs, and power plants.
In July, media reports claimed that Stuxnet had targeted industrial computers around the globe with Iran being the main target of the attack, particularly the country's newly launched Bushehr power plant.
US and Israeli officials have claimed that their efforts to develop the destructive computer virus have dealt a blow to Iran's nuclear program.
Iranian officials, however, have fiercely rejected such claims, saying that Stuxnet was detected early by Iranian experts and had caused no serious damage to the country's industrial sites.
Reacting to the cyber attack, Iran's Telecommunications Minister Reza Taqipour said in November, “Iranian computers are no longer facing [Stuxnet] threat.”
"This computer malware wormed its way into industrial systems via flash memories and not through networks," said Taqipour.
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