Stuxnet, discovered in 2010, attacked via USB drives and was designed to attack computers that controlled the centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran.

Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher with Kaspersky, said the Godel code may include a similar “warhead.”

Godel copies a compressed, encrypted program onto USB drives. That program will only decompress and activate when it comes in contact with a targeted system.

While Kaspersky has yet to fully crack Godel’s code, Schouwenberg said he suspects it is a cyber w eapon designed to cause physical damage and that its developers went to a lot of trouble to hide its purpose, using an encryption scheme that could take months or even years to unravel.

CODE BREAKERS WANTED

He said the prospect that a cyber weapon like Gauss or Stuxnet could attack critical infrastructure keeps him up at night.

“They could do pretty much anything,” he said. “A few weeks ago when power went out in and around ( Washington) D.C. , my first thought was a cyber weapon.”

Kaspersky said it is searching for “world-class” cryptographers to help it break the code.

A United Nations agency that advises countries on protecting critical infrastructure plans to send an alert on the mysterious code.