Iran claims to have defeated a powerful computer virus that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users.
The country's deputy minister of communications and information technology Ali Hakim Javadi said today that Iranian experts have produced an anti-virus capable of identifying and removing "Flame" from computers.
Iran's government-run Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre has said the Flame virus was focused on expionage.
The virus is unprecedented in size and complexity, according to Russian internet security firm Kaspersky.
Researcher Roel Schouwenberg marvelled at its versatility, saying: "It can be used to spy on everything that a user is doing."
Computers in Iran appear to have been particularly affected, and Kaspersky suggested the virus was created at the behest of a national government, fuelling speculation that it could be part of an Israeli-backed campaign of electronic sabotage against the Jewish state's arch-enemy.
The virus can activate a computer's audio systems to listen in on Skype calls or office chatter. It can also take screenshots, log keystrokes and - in one of its more novel functions - steal data from Bluetooth-enabled phones.
Mr Schouwenberg said there is evidence to suggest that the people behind Flame also helped craft Stuxnet, a virus that is believed to have attacked nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2010. Many suspect Stuxnet was the work of Israeli intelligence.
Israel's vice-premier did little to deflect suspicion about the country's possible involvement in the cyberattack.
Moshe Yaalon said: "Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat is likely to take various steps, including these, to hobble it. Israel is blessed with high technology, and we boast tools that open all sorts of opportunities for us."
Researchers not involved in Flame's discovery were more sceptical of its sophistication than Kaspersky, with Richard Bejtlich of Virginia-based Mandiant saying the virus appeared similar to spyware used by the German government to monitor criminal suspects.
"There have been tools like this employed by high-end teams for many years," he said.
Colorado-based webroot said the virus was not as complex or as stealthy as Stuxnet and was "a relatively easy threat to identify".
Flame is unusually large. Malicious programmes collected by the British security firm Sophos averaged about 340 kilobytes in 2010, the same year that Kaspersky believes Flame first started spreading. Flame is 20 megabytes - nearly 60 times that figure.