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U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French President
CowboyRobot writes with the (not unexpected) official U.S. denial of using the Flame malware to spy on France. From the article: "That allegation was leveled at the U.S. government by unnamed French officials, according to a Tuesday report in the weekly French newspaper L'Express. It reported that computers belonging to top advisers to then French president Nicolas Sarkozy had been hacked using the Flame cyberespionage malware, which was designed to be used in highly targeted attacks... Napolitano was also asked if it wasn't ironic that while the United States has been sounding alarms over the growing amount of malware that's targeting U.S. government system, it also commissioning the Stuxnet and Flame cyber-espionage malware used against Iran. Napolitano, however, pled official ignorance. 'These programs were never attributed in any way to the U.S. government.'"
U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French President
So what did they use to spy on him then?
To see how the bad the presidents love life is to make themselves feel better? Or if this was a few years ago perhaps they just wanted to hear Carli Bruni singing in the bath?
Never believe anything until it's been officially denied. (source)
F: Hey, USA, did you eat my last cupcake? ...while my job is to, er, increase the protection of cupcakes using all the means available to me.
USA: The consumption of the last cupcake was never attributed in any way to me.
F: I see. But did you eat it?
USA: Beyond this point, your question presupposes a yes or no answer...
F: Well, yes, I want to know if you ate it...
USA:
F: Okaayy... you ate it, didn't you?
USA: Look, to do this, my cupcake procurement and protection budget has been increased 40% last year, and will increases another 75% next year. Everyone's cupcakes will be safer!
F: Wow, thanks! But I notice you didn't actually deny taking my cupcake.
USA: Sorry, I have to go now.
They didn't use Flame to spy on the president. They have other spyware for that.
And in the spirit of "truthyness", they said they didn't spy on the French Government, but instead on the advisers to a candidate during an election which he eventually lost. Just a tiny bit different from spying on the President. Perhaps they were only spying on his political advisers in any case.
Actually, I think it was Francois Hollande spying on Sarco's election campaign (:-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
They didn't use Flame to spy on just the French president.
This cannot be! Denials are useless! America is always at fault for everything that goes wrong everywhere in the entire world.
That is true, unless they can blame another country for something it didn't do!
did they expect them to say? Oh yeah, my bad, we did it for the lolz. (speaking in the style of Steve Martin in Pink Panther)
le flamé
rewriting history since 2109
touché
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
With Cheese.
But he was actually president at the time of the spying because he was the incumbent.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Whenever you get caught doing something you deny it. Thats the first rule of doing shit youre not supposed to do. Hell if the government will deny when their own special forces gets caught or killed by the enemy why should they fess up to a computer virus when human life means so little to them?
Rule of life to live by...
Never write anything down.
No video.
No pictures.
Deny, deny, deny.
Royal flaming cheese head?
Don't mine me. I'm monolingual, but I thought that almost made sense.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
With Cheese.
Extra Bacon?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
With Cheese.
Extra Bacon?
Pigs are filthy animals.
I wish they would just say something like "Of course we are spying on the French president. We spy on everyone, friend and foe alike. That's our job. And if you aren't spying on us then you should fire your incompetent intelligence staff and find better ones."
I can't for one moment believe that could ever be true? The USA? Not the USA where the DIA has had at least several members of the richest families in America at its help since its inception by McNamara?
Sure, John Negroponte (recently noted at an Aspen Institute gathering on intelligence, along with fave biographer of Petraues, Paula Broadwell, who managed to do his biography while she was doing the general) and Frank Wisner, Jr. (still hasn't figured out the CIA murdered his dad????) put together that Franco-American Foundation to screw Sarkozy's competitor in the first presidential election, but I just can't believe the USA would continue to do such horrific stuff!!!!!
Uh oh! My French poodle, curiously enough named after Sarkozy, is getting upset and I must ran to feed him.....
Still cleaner than most 2 year-old children . . .
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Whoosh.
It's a Pulp Fiction reference. In the film, there's a famous discussion where they talk about how the McDonald's burger known as the "Quarter Pounder" in America is called a "Royale with Cheese" over in France. Hence the "with Cheese" statement here after the word "Royale" was used.
L'Express have been quick to point US responsability. While we could imagine that a third party got Flame sources, it would still have required top skills to use it. The best suspects are therefore the original authors. But US did not produce Flame alone, they did it with Israel. Why not suspect Israel?
The location of the computers targeted by Flame tells you a lot about the people behind it. When initial reports came out about Flame, it was revealed that it primarily targeted Iran (189 infections), with additional infections in Israel/Palestine (89), Sudan (32), Syria (30) and Lebanon (18). The focus on Iran suggests the U.S. and/or Israel as being behind Flame. However, the remainder of the list focuses on countries that pose a threat to Israel, as opposed to countries that would be of more interest to U.S. security (Pakistan, Afghanistan). That always made me suspect Israel, but one thing never made sense. Why the interest in Sudan, of all places?
Recent events shed some light on this. The missiles used by Hamas to attack Israel are manufactured by Iran, and then smuggled via Egypt into Gaza. But how do they get from Iran into Egypt? Through Sudan. And Israel appears to have been working actively to stop this. On October 28, eight Israeli Air Force F-15s flew 1200 miles into Sudanese airspace, supported by a tanker and a jamming plane, and dropped four 1,000 pound bombs on a weapons factory. That's the kind of operation where you need good intelligence to find your targets and assess their defenses.
So up to now, the evidence points squarely at Israel as being the people behind Flame. The possibility exists that the U.S. had a hand in developing it, but the targets have been people of interest to Israel. I can't figure out why on earth they would target Sarkozy, but it seems far more likely to me that the Israelis would target him for some devious scheme of theirs, than that Obama would risk alienating a fellow NATO member and an ally.