Cyber warfare has acquired dangerous tones with the discovery of Stuxnet, the world's most sophisticated computer virus believed to be the handiwork of the US and Israel. There are others that are as deadly. How safe are our systems?

There is a cyber war going on between Iran and a few other countries. And India has been caught in the crossfire.

It all started two years ago with Stuxnet, considered the most sophisticated computer virus ever and the virtual world's first weapon of mass destruction.

'Stuxnet is like a laser-guided missile. Compared to it, the older generation of viruses and trojans (malicious computer programs) seem like crude bombs,' says Shantanu Ghosh, MD, Symantec, a cyber security firm. 'It's capable of wracking massive damage to digital infrastructure.'
There is a reason why Stuxnet , caught in the wild by cyber security researchers in 2010, acquired this fearsome reputation . Cyber security firms like Kaspersky believe Stuxnet is the work of a nation. The likely suspects are the US and Israel because the malicious program seems to have been designed with a single purpose — disable and create havoc inside the nuclear installations of Iran by targeting several components manufactured by Siemens which are used by machines inside Iranian facilities.

While no one has confirmed anything, reports say that Stuxnet has hit a homerun as far as derailing Iran'.