"Regin", a sophisticated spying program detected in the attacks, is identical to a secret cyber weapon developed by the NSA whose existence emerged in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, according to a report in Spiegel's online edition.

The program has also been identified in a "serious cyber attack" on the European Commission in 2011, and found on a USB stick belonging to a member of Angela Merkel's staff, according to German press reports.

It was found on the computers of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, according to Austria's Der Standard newspaper.

Costin Raiu, head of research at Kaspersky, told Spiegel a detailed comparison of Regin with the "Qwerty" code leaked in the Snowden documents showed they were the same.

"We're confident that what we here in front us is the key logger module of Regin," Mr Raiu said. "According to our technical analysis, 'Qwerty' is identical with plug in 50251 of Regin."

Regin has been described as the most dangerous cyber weapon since Stuxnet, the computer worm used to attack the Iranian nuclear programme in 2010.

It is believed to include a sophisticated key logger program that can record all data entered into a computer and send it undetected over the internet.

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