Flame ON!!! New virus dwarfs Stuxnet in scope and sophistication

As many of you may recall, in 2009 the Iranian government's nuclear program was set back by nearly 5 years due to a SCADA (Supervisory Contral and Data Acquisition) attack that destroyed/damaged many crucial systems. Stuxnet was quite clearly the highest form of AI scene thus far in a computer virus... it hid, self-replicated, would lay dormant during peak worker hours to avoid detection, etc.

Stuxnet

Stuxnet the best malware ever?

There has never been any solid attribution given to who created and deployed Stuxnet, although most agree that it was most likely the United States and/or Israel. A few other countries, namely Russia, China, and South Korea, are probably capable of creating such a program, but they have little if no motivation to do so, especially against Iran.

Stuxnet was limited to primarily Iran, with a few other countries having comparitively minor levels of infection.

Enter Flame, the next generation of intelligent malware... like Stuxnet, but on steroids.

Flame

More FLAME'ing

As the links illustrate it is clear that Flame is vastly more complicated and ambitious in scope. Of particular interest is the ability of Flame to record/turn on VOiP, microphone (if equipped), and Skype programs, enable Bluetooth to use for port scanning, and the fact it is 20x larger (code wise) than Stuxnet.
Flame is almost assuredly a state-created AI malware.

The most pressing questions I have are...
A) Is this the work of the United States and/or Israel, and if not, then who?
B) Are we seeing the future of Big Brother taking root right before our eyes?

Anyways, happy hunting, thanks for reading.

reply to post by Dreine


I can see it now! CSA (Computer Safety Administration) will be going door to door to make sure we are all safe from our computers! Sound familiar?

reply to post by Dreine


I've not noticed another thread dealing with this same event...

But I will say that although I do not believe Russia is behind Flame, I would not put it past them. Russian cyber capabilities are absolutely amazing, by far the largest 'threat' to Western powers, even moreso than China.

And what better way to stop any possible "American Spring" or what have you, than to have a nasty virus kill the Internet... or monitor it more thoroughly than any other software in history.

Beeing a bit into this scene, I was really impressed to see this news today, but I think that Stuxnet and now Flame are just the tip of the iceberg....


btw. I wonder what kind of events "one" could stage with that kind of botnet...

reply to post by aLLeKs


If Stuxnet could bring down Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges, I would think that Flame would be able for far greater things...

Bringing down the electrical grid.
Destroying/falsifying credit information.
Recording/circle of influencing an individuals contacts and daily activities.
BCC'ing all e-mails sent to an unknown entity.

There is really no limit, especially considering Flame has 20 built-in 'mods' which allow for further customization.