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.'"

Comments

U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French

[Anonymous Coward]

U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French President

So what did they use to spy on him then?

First rule of politics...

[Kergan]

Never believe anything until it's been officially denied. (source)

How sincere...

[Anonymous Coward]

F: Hey, USA, did you eat my last cupcake?
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: ...while my job is to, er, increase the protection of cupcakes using all the means available to me.
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.

Re:I find this denial very truthful...

[durrr]

They didn't use Flame to spy on the president. They have other spyware for that.

Re:I find this denial very truthful...

[davecb]

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

Re:U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On Frenc

[JustOK]

le flamé

Closed Source dangers

[Seeteufel]

FLAME is W32 malware. The French President Hollande should invest into a national operating system based on the Linux kernel for public administration and ban Closed Source software from public desks. The European Parliament warned in 2001 in its Echolon Spy System report but Mr. Sarkozy didn't listen:

Calls on the Commission and Member States to promote software projects whose source text is made public (open-source software), as this is the only way of guaranteeing that no backdoors are built into programmes;

Re:Closed Source dangers

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Do you really want national intelligence agencies to be focusing their efforts on linux spyware?

Re:U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On Frenc

[DoofusOfDeath]

Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!

With Cheese.

Of course they deny it.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Of course they deny it.

[tehpuppet]

Exactly, like the time the French government denied attacking a civilian ship in New Zealand, murdering one of the crew members in the process. Then when caught, lied to the UN about punishing the agents involved.

Re:U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On Frenc

[Runaway1956]

Royal flaming cheese head?

Don't mine me. I'm monolingual, but I thought that almost made sense.

Re:I find this denial very truthful...

[flyingsquid]

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.