Much like the response to Stuxnet, a number of major security software firms are working in conjunction to crack the recently discovered Duqu virus, dispatching some regular threats, such as botnets, as they search for the source of the Trojan.

Symantec said the malware (malicious software) was found by a European-based organization, and although it remains uncertain where the Trojan originated, malware experts agree that the new virus -- called Duqu because it creates files with a "~DQ" prefix -- is based off of the infamous Stuxnet.

“Right now, we are pretty sure that is the next generation of Stuxnet,” said Sergey Golovanov in a telephone interview with Forbes.

Lauded a ground-breaking virus by computer scientists, Stuxnet was capable of delivering a highly-specific payload to attack control systems, the Wall Street Journal reports.

From Forbes:

Stuxnet was discovered in 2010 with the help of the leading software security firms, including Kaspersky in Russia and Symantec in the U.S. The worm targeted Iranian nuclear power plants and industrial software used in enriching uranium.

While no one government came forward to claim responsibility for Stuxnet, those on the front lines of IT security say that with 100% certainty it was a government agency who created it, like cryptologists at the National Security Agency of the U.S. or a similar organizations in Israel and the UK.

The Symantec report says that Duqu is "similar to Stuxnet but is designed to gather intelligence for future attacks on industrial control systems."

The threat was written by the same authors and appears to have been created since the last Stuxnet file was recovered," Symantec said on its website.

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