Link Found Between Stuxnet and Flame!

Kaspersky Labs have found a unique piece of code that appeared in both the Stuxnet virus and Flame virus.  An earlier article in The New York Times, reports that the virus’s were most likely, created in tandem, by the U.S.A. and Israel to undermine the nuclear facilities of Iran. The two teams of developers seem to have ended their joint involvement in development of  the malware sometime in 2010.   Both governments (u.s. and israel) have denied participation.

I am slightly surprised that they made such undetectable, highly sophisticated malware/spyware, but failed to notice they had used the same piece of coding in both virus’s.  Big fail.  And an even bigger fail is that they were trying to sabotage the iranian nuclear enrichment facility.  They could have caused a meltdown!!  Or were they trying to cause a meltdown in order to justify another war?  The world does not need another 3 mile island, chernobyl or fukushima.

http://news.yahoo.com/proof-links-flame-stuxnet-super-cyber-weapons-researchers-150951902–abc-news-topstories.html

The Flame Virus.

“We believe Flame was written by a different team of programmers but commissioned by the same larger entity,” Roel Schouwenberg, a security researcher at Kaspersky Labs, said.

From my previous post, we must assume Flame is the work of the United States and/or Israel. Nations that have the skill to commit cyber espionage of this complexity are mainly the U.S.A., Israel, Russia, and China.

Flame has infected thousands of systems and stolen data across the middle east.  Iran has confirmed infections on several high ranking officials computers.

At 20 megabytes in size, the Flame virus is huge, much, much larger than Duqu or Stuxnet.  They also believe that it Flame could be older than 2007 and it’s been hiding in plain sight the whole time.  Flame is different than Duqu or Stuxnet because it operates much like a smart phone, they can add or take off programs or “apps” designed to do different tasks.

If Flame is older than 2007, what is out there now, that no one has found yet?  and if these programs are taking information from abroad, how long have they been taking and using data from citizens computers of the United States?

All along is obviously the answer.

Stuxnet: Created by the U.S. and Israel

An article from the New York Times has confirmed the Stuxnet virus was made by the United States and Israel to break the hardware used in the Iranian centrifuge equipment.  The U.S. and Israel had hoped to set back Iranian progress on their nuclear capabilities and the U.S. wanted to hopefully prevent Israel from preemptively striking Iran.

The program which was authorized by former president George W. Bush was only supposed to operate inside of Iran’s Natanz facility.  It worked quite well, mapping out the network connections within Natanz and sending information back to the NSA.  Soon, labs all over the U.S. were working on bits and pieces of the code, not knowing the specific details.  They were trying to find the right set of commands to break into the centrifuges.. they succeeded.  How the malicious code was introduced into the facility is not known.

The program continued under President Obama.  But then in 2010, Stuxnet escaped from the facility, perhaps on a laptop, where it was free to spread…

“We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” one of the briefers told the president, “and we don’t know if we were part of that activity.”

Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. “It’s got to be the Israelis,” he said. “They went too far.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirmed-us-israel-created-stuxnet-lost-control-of-it/?comments=1#comments-bar