Data-Stealing Cyber Virus Discovered in Iran

Data-Stealing Cyber Virus Discovered in Iran

Security experts have recently discovered a high-end computer virus in Iran and the Middle East believed to be deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.

Evidence suggest that the virus dubbed as Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker who have allegedly discovered the virus.

Kaspersky researchers announced on Monday they have yet to determine whether Flame had the same specific mission like Stuxnet, but did not disclose who they think designed and installed it.

Iran had accused Israel and the United States of deploying Stuxnet.

Cyber security experts said the discovery provides renewed evidence to the public to show what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of questionable computer codes as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.

A cyber security agency in Iran announced trough their website on Monday that Flame bore a "close relation" to Stuxnet, the notorious computer virus which attacked that country's nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.

Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran analyzed were responsible for huge data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

Kaspersky Lab said it discovered Flame after a U.N. telecommunications agency asked it to analyze data on a suspicious software across the Middle East in search of the data-wiping virus reported by Iran.

Experts at Kaspersky Lab and Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security who have spent weeks studying Flame said they have yet to find any evidence that it can delete data, attack infrastructure or inflict other physical damage.

Flame appears to be the third major cyber weapon uncovered after Stuxnet and its data-stealing cousin Duqu, named after the Star Wars villain.

The virus contains about 20 times as much code as Stuxnet, which caused centrifuges to fail at the Iranian enrichment facility it attacked. It has about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information, said Kaspersky Lab senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg.

Posted by James Fried on Tuesday May 29 2012, 1:14 AM EDT. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Finance. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0