Researchers Discover Sophisticated Attack By Flame Virus

A report released on Monday, May 28 has stated that a highly complex malware virus named Flame has been gathering data from computers located in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Flame has been operational in the Middle East for two years and researchers believe it is being used as a spying tool.

According to Kapersky Labs the virus is able to take computer screen shots, document instant messenger chats, record audio and record keystrokes and network traffic. Most of these activities can be turned on remotely and the data collected is sent back to a central location.

This discovery is proving to be part of a disturbing trend that has seen two other cyber weapons being unearthed since 2010. Stuxnet was a virus that made headlines when it attacked nuclear installations in Iran in 2010. The virus was created to attack specific industrial computers and basically destroyed Iranian centrifuges being used in their nuclear program.

Another major virus was Duqu which seemed to be working along the same line of espionage as Flame. The virus collected data from the infected computer and then sent it back to its controllers. The virus was also reported to have attacked only 50 locations across the globe. After an analysis of Stuxnet and Duqu many experts believed that the two were created by the same band of programmers.

According to the report on Flame, the virus is bigger and wider spread than either Suxnet and Duqu. Researchers have stated that the newly discovered threat has 20MB of programming making it 20 times larger than Stuxnet. Flame has also been detected on thousands of computers in the Middle East including individually owned PCs, company computers and university computers.

The sheer size and complexity of Flame may take years to be analyzed by experts. However, this fact indicates that the virus was probably not cooked up by some teenager in his basement and may have been the work of a well funded government operation. Many believe that this new form of cyber espionage is likely to increase in the future with governments setting up units to counter attacks and create their own spy viruses.