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Newly discovered malware most lethal cyberweapon to date by efwegbe erergeer
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Newly discovered malware most lethal cyberweapon to date |
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A new kind of malware that is more sophisticated and damaging thanthe notorious Stuxnet and Duqu worms is likely being deployed by anation state, say the cybersecurity experts who uncovered it. "Duqu and Stuxnet raised the stakes in the cyberbattles beingfought in the Middle East, but now we've found what might be themost sophisticated cyberweapon yet unleashed," wrote analystAlexander Gostev in a blog post on the website of Kaspersky Lab Monday. Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, Iran's Maher Computer Emergency Response Team Co-ordination Centre and the cryptography and system security lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungaryhave all independently uncovered the Trojan while investigatingwide-scale cyberattacks. The worm, which has variously been dubbed Flame, Flamer andsKyWIper based on filenames that appear in the decrypted malwarecode, is able to mine a vast array of data from infected machinesby: Surveying network traffic. Taking screenshots, including in instant messaging programs.
Recording audio conversations via a computer's internal microphone. Collecting passwords. Intercepting keyboard actions Gleaning information from devices connected to the infected machineby Bluetooth. Scanning hard drives for specific file extensions or content. Transmitting data to servers that control the malware "Flame is one of the most complex threats ever discovered," Gostevwrote.
'It's a complete attack tool kit designed for generalcyber-espionage purposes.' Alexander Gostev, analyst, Kaspersky Lab It far surpasses Stuxnet and Duqu, two worms behind cyberattacksagainst technology related to Iran's nuclear energy program, bothin size the program used to deploy it is 20 MB versus about 500KB and in its capability to steal information in so manydifferent ways. "It's a complete attack tool kit designed for generalcyber-espionage purposes," writes Gostev. Several Mideast countries hit Like other viruses, it is able to replicate across a local networkand removable devices such as USB sticks and portable drives and iscontrolled through a series of command-and-control servers aroundthe world, which can also remotely remove every trace of the worm. Just how it initially enters a computer is not yet known.
Kaspersky Lab discovered the worm, which it found under thecodename Worm.Win32.Flame, while carrying out work for the International Telecommunication Union , a United Nations agency, which had asked it to try to tracemalware that was deleting sensitive information from computers inseveral countries in the Middle East. Iranian technicians work at the Bushehr nuclear power plant inNovember 2010, the year that Stuxnet, a malicious computer virustargeting Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure was discovered. (Ebrahim Norouzi/International Iran Photo Agen/Associated Press) Gostev said his company is still analysing the malware but that itis certain it was deployed in August 2010 and has been circulatingsince around February or March 2010 and possibly in earlierversions before that. The Hungarian team found evidence of the wormas early as 2007. Kaspersky has ruled out the possibility that the malware wascreated by hacktivists or cybercriminals because its intention isnot to steal money, its architecture is vastly more complex thanthat used by hackers and its targets have been confined to severalcountries in the Middle East and Africa.
The company has concluded that it is likely the work of a nationstate. The Hungarian lab concurs, saying in its analysis that the worm was probably "developed by a government agency of anation state with significant budget and effort, and it may berelated to cyber warfare activities." "SKyWIper is certainly the most sophisticated malware weencountered during our practice; arguably, it is the most complexmalware ever found," it said in its analysis. Kaspersky has so far identified seven countries that have beenaffected by Flame attacks: Iran (189 infections) Israel and Palestine (98 targets) Sudan (32 targets) Syria (30 targets) Lebanon (18 targets) Saudi Arabia (10 targets) Egypt (5 targets) The Hungarian experts found that the worm, which they traced underthe filename wavesup3.drv, was active in several Europeancountries, including Hungary, the United Arab Emirates and Iran. Variety of targets So far, there doesn't seem to be a pattern to the types of targetsattacked.
Individuals, educational institutions and state-relatedorganizations have all been hit, Gostev said. "From the initial analysis, it looks like the creators of Flame aresimply looking for any kind of intelligence emails, documents,messages, discussions inside sensitive locations, pretty mucheverything," Gostev writes. "We have not seen any specific signsindicating a particular target, such as the energy industry." Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure was one of the targets of theStuxnet cyberattack in 2010, so there will likely be suspicionsthat the newly identified worm might be deployed in similar ways. The Stuxnet worm specifically targeted Siemens software andequipment, which is the basis of Iran's uranium-enrichmentinfrastructure, and did significant damage to Iran's nuclearcapabilities. Cybersecurity experts suspect it was created by Israeli or U.S.programmers at the behest of intelligence agencies in thosecountries.
In a security advisory issued Monday, Iran's Maher centre said that recent incidents of"mass data loss" in Iran could be the result of the new worm thatit and its counterparts in Russia and Hungary have identified. I am Flower Pots & Planters writer, reports some information about brake bleeder screw , defend your castle.
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