Nuclear installations have become targets of cyberattacks in “plenty” of cases, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano said yesterday at a nuclear security conference in Vienna.

IAEA member countries asked the agency to step up efforts in helping countries defend their nuclear sites against “the growing threat” of such crimes, in a unanimous decision adopted by ministers and senior officials.

“We have reported to the member states that there are plenty of cyberattacks, and this is a very important issue for the IAEA,” director general Amano told reporters.

He did not explain the exact scope of the problem or who was behind the attacks.

One of the known instances was the Stuxnet virus, which was discovered in 2010 and led to technical problems at Iranian nuclear installations.

Western IT security experts believe Stuxnet was developed by intelligence agencies in Western countries such as Israel or the United States, who fear that Iran seeks nuclear weapons.

The ministerial declaration also acknowledged “that more needs to be done to further strengthen nuclear security worldwide.” It called on Governments to sign on to an international treaty on protecting nuclear materials domestically, a pact from 2005 that has not yet entered into force because not enough countries are backing it.

The declaration, supported by 123 countries, also included calls to reduce the use of highly enriched uranium, which could be used by terrorists in nuclear weapons or in crude “dirty bombs.” Two nuclear security summits in 2010 in Washington and in 2012 in Seoul issued similar broad and non-binding documents, but less than 60 countries were invited to this process , initiated by the US.

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