Now Stuxnet, the invisible, terrible, and mighty worm, is sending deceptive signals to the Iranian airforce through radar.

Airmen scrambled to intercept an attack by aircraft that were not there.

Here’s the report:

Stuxnet is also in the process of raiding Iran’s military systems, sowing damage and disorder in its wake.

On Nov. 17, in the middle of a massive air defense exercise, Iranian military sources reported six foreign aircraft had intruded the airspace over the practice sites and were put to flight by Iranian fighters. The next day, a different set of military sources claimed a misunderstanding; there had been no intrusions. Iranian fighters had simulated an enemy raid which too had been repulsed. …

There was no “misunderstanding.” The foreign intruders had shown up on the exercise’s radar screens, but when the fighter jets scrambled to intercept them, they found an empty sky, meaning the radar instruments had lied.

The military command accordingly decided to give up on using the exercise as a stage for unveiling new and highly sophisticated weaponry, including a homemade radar system, for fear that they too may have been infected by the ubiquitous Stuxnet worm.

Postscript: The fact that Stuxnet is not (or not yet) being used against North Korea suggests that it was not dispatched to Iran by the United States.