Online Pandemic: When Countries Infect Each Other in Cyberspace Dec. 21, 2020 at 12:07 pm January 4, 2021 A decade ago, the world was caught off guard when news broke out that a computer virus had infected industrial sites in Iran. Named Stuxnet, the virus spread when a worker inserted an infected USB drive into his computer. One of the affected industrial sites was a nuclear plant in Iran. Iran, according to security firm Symantec, bore the brunt of the virus with nearly 59% of the attacks directed at it. India, too, was impacted with 8.31% hits. In October 2011, another worm called W32.Duqu was created from the same code base as Stuxnet that was primarily designed to sabotage industrial machinery. Duqu, on the other hand, was geared for information theft, specifically information related to industrial systems and other secrets.