WASHINGTON – The “Shamoon” virus that attacked Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Saudi Aramco, was probably the most destructive attack the business sector has seen to date, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday. Addressing business leaders in New York, Panetta described the virus as sophisticated and noted that a similar attack days later struck Qatar's natural gas firm, Rasgas. “More than 30,000 computers that it infected (at Saudi Aramco) were rendered useless, and had to be replaced,” he said. He said Shamoon included a routine called a “wiper,” coded to self-execute, which replaced crucial system files with an image of a burning US flag. It also overwrote all the real data on the machine with what he called garbage data. “Imagine the impact an attack like this would have on your company,” Panetta said, as he called for steps to bolster the nation's cyber defenses. A former US government official said American authorities firmly believe that Iranian hackers, likely supported by the Tehran government, were responsible for recent cyberattacks against oil and gas companies in the Arabian Gulf and that they appeared to be in retaliation for the latest round of US sanctions against the country. The former official spoke to The Associated Press shortly before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a speech to business leaders in New York City Thursday night, became the first US official to publicly acknowledge the computer-based assaults. And while Panetta did not directly link Iran to the Gulf attacks, he made it clear that the US has developed advanced techniques to identify cyber attackers and is prepared to take action against them. – Agencies
