Which countries were suspected of having the expertise to create Stuxnet?

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cyberwar U.S. Air Force personnel updating antivirus software for protection against cyberspace hackers, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, 2010.

The Stuxnet worm, a highly sophisticated piece of malware discovered in 2010, was designed to sabotage industrial control systems, specifically targeting Iran's nuclear facilities.1

Due to the extreme technical complexity required to create such a weapon, many cybersecurity analysts and experts pointed to the United States and Israel as the countries most likely responsible for its development. These nations possessed the necessary expertise in computer science and engineering, and both had expressed significant concern regarding the potential development of nuclear weapons by the Iranian government.1

While officials from both the United States and Israel have declined to comment on the matter, the deployment of Stuxnet is widely regarded as a significant escalation in cyberwar, representing a state-sponsored offensive cyberattack against the critical infrastructure of a sovereign state.1