President Barack Obama secretly ordered cyber attacks on the systems that run Iran's nuclear program be increased during the early days of his presidency, FOX News Channel confirmed today, citing a senior national security source.
The attacks began during the Bush administration under the code name "Olympic Games," according to a report in The New York Times.
Obama made the decision to accelerate the cyber attacks after malware named Stuxnet accidentally became public in the summer of 2010. A programming error enabled it to leave Iran's Natanz nuclear facility and sent it across the globe via the internet, the newspaper reported.
According to experts, Stuxnet was sent to home in on the computers running uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, destroying thousands of them and setting the atomic program back months.
It also was said to have disrupted operations at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant in June 2010.
Tehran has long blamed the US and Israel for creating the worm, but claimed the damage Stuxnet caused was significantly less than suggested by Western media.
Another cyber weapon - named Flame - recently attacked computers at Iran's Oil Ministry and the National Iranian Oil Company, wiping data off official servers.
US officials declined to take responsibility for the Flame attack on Iran.
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