‘Flame’ Malware Spying Across The Middle East

Security researchers at the Kaspersky Labs and officials from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) discovered a highly elaborate and sophisticated malware called ‘Flame’ to have been stealing data from a number of systems across the Middle East, with businesses and universities in Iran and Israel being the initial targets. Flame easily duplicates itself on local networks and removable devices to take screenshots of active applications, record audio communication and pose other complex security threats via plug-ins employed by the attackers.

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Flame sizes up to be a 20MB software incorporating various methods of encryption and numerous libraries, making it the most functional and complex cyber threat till date. These factors have forced several experts to support the hypotheses of a nation state backing the malware as a part of their cyber warfare tactics.

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While Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team claims to have a removal tool ready for delivery, the malware is still active, accessing sensitive information from the infected systems.

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