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Flame: The Massive Stuxnet-Level Malware Sweeping the Middle East
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is reporting on a massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation. Kaspersky Lab, the company that discovered the malware, has a FAQ with more details."
Who made Flame?
Flame seems to use libraries with permissive licenses only. No hacktivists or cybercriminals would care about this issue, they would use whatever works best.
This leaves governments, they might. Why? Because if it ever becomes known who actually made it, that party would need to release all of the sources, had they used libraries under some copyleft license! Why? Well, whoever made Flame has already obviously distributed binaries, so suing for copyleft violation would happen in court, and it would be many people suing, especially the counterparty is the government. It would be a PR disaster, and to risk that on an election year? No way.
Also, Flame requires a considerable infrastructure to store and analyze the spied information. Which governments would be capable of pulling this off? All the big ones with a lot of money to spend: China, Russia, Great Britain, France, USA, Japan, ...
So, which government cares a lot about intellectual property? China? Nope. Russia? Nope. Great Britain - well, yeah. Personally, I don't think it was Great Britain. It would be enlightening to check the Flame Lua-parts (or other plaintext in the main Flame) for spelling of -ise vs. -ize. I bet there's -ize and not -ise.
It is said that Stuxnet and Flame share similar 0-day holes. The nation which developed Stuxnet is Israel and they have a strong history of military and intelligence collaboration with USA. Israel would not have had the capability or capacity to run two such parallel programs on its own.
So who HAS likely NOT made Flame? Drop the nations which are one way or another unlikely candidates, and only one name is really left.
So, who made Flame?
USA made Flame. This is what I think. What's your analysis?
There comes a point with even the most successful cyberattack vector-- think stuxnet-- of diminishing returns. Sooner or later the nation under attack is going to wise up and put in place some sort of protection.
However the attacker can change the game and go public just before that point, and do so in a way that can create enough confusion and fud to further damage his opponent. The way the news about stuxnet was dribbled out, with lots of caveats and plausible conspiracy theories, Iran has had to spend a lot more than they had budgeted for on system reviews. And all those Iranian tech people who have been tied up in assuring that military and critical civilian systems are clean-- well, they are no longer available for other pursuits, like refining nuclear detonation models or missile control systems. This is significant: if you can tie up the intellectual resources of a country with a few thousand lines of code, you can bring the development of their war machine to a grinding halt. And do it without anyone having to dodge real bullets.
It is plausible that we are now learning about Flame because its controllers have decided that it is time to go public. Kaspersky might be simply an unwitting player in moving the game to the next level. Or perhaps they are very much in the loop. From the perspective of a third party, it doesn't matter. What matters is that Flame makes it more likely that any clandestine business arrangements with repressive Middle East countries will become public. That shifts the risk - benefit analysis of companies that are thinking about doing business with those governments, and those governments will find some purchases will be harder to make and more expensive.
Of course this post adds to the fud; it suggests a complex conspiracy theory operating on several levels. I can say that I am not a party to such a conspiracy, but most readers would not be able to verify that. I can also say that as I do not much like the current regimes in Iran and Syria, I think it would be a good thing if they had to spend more of their resources on assuring that all their computers were clean of nasty little surprises. It seems to me that talking up the possibility of some kind of international conspiracy of many, many levels would be a good thing, whether it is true or not. Could the intelligence agencies of the USA, UK, Israel, Russia, Denmark (why not Denmark?) and so on have formed their own little Anonymous group? Can you not picture Ninja Hackers in Guy Fawkes masks?
Will