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 Flame virus threatens global computer security 
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Post Flame virus threatens global computer security
Flame virus threatens global computer security; developed by U.S. government

Eugene Kaspersky, whose lab discovered the Flame virus that has attacked computers in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, said on Wednesday only a global effort could stop a new era of "cyber terrorism".

"It's not cyber war, it's cyber terrorism and I'm afraid it's just the beginning of the game ... I'm afraid it will be the end of the world as we know it," Kaspersky told reporters at a cyber security conference in Tel Aviv.

"I'm scared, believe me," he said.

News of the Flame virus surfaced last week. Researchers said technical evidence suggests it was built for the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear programme in 2010.

In recent months U.S. officials have become more open about the work of the United States and Israel on Stuxnet, which targeted Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.

The West suspects Iran is developing atomic weapons. Tehran denies this and says it is enriching uranium only for civilian use.

Security experts say Flame is one of the most sophisticated pieces of malicious software so far discovered. They are still investigating the virus, which they believe was released specifically to infect computers in Iran and across the Middle East.

Kaspersky named the United States, Britain, Israel, China, Russia and possibly India, Japan and Romania as countries with the ability to develop such software, but stopped short of saying which nation he thought was behind Flame.

When asked whether Israel was part of the solution or part of the problem regarding cyber war, Kaspersky said: "Both."

"CYBER BOOMERANG"

"Flame is extremely complicated but I think many countries can do the same or very similar, even countries that don't have enough of the expertise at the moment. They can employ engineers or kidnap them, or employ 'hacktivists'," he said.

"These ideas are spreading too fast," Kaspersky later said, "That cyber boomerang may get back to you."

Kaspersky said governments must cooperate to stop such attacks, as they have done with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Operating systems must be redesigned, he added.

"Software that manages industrial systems or transportation or power grids or air traffic, they must be based on secure operating systems. Forget about Microsoft, Linux, Unix."

Kaspersky said malware like Flame and Stuxnet have a limited lifetime and that undiscovered viruses could be out there.

"It's quite logical that there are new cyber weapons designed and maybe there are computers which are infected."

At the conference Kaspersky got celebrity treatment, with students huddled around to have their picture taken with him. He spoke alongside Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak and top security experts from leading hi-tech companies.

Barak said a more comprehensive approach was necessary to deal with cyber threats and it required cooperation on an international level.

"The damage you can save yourself from proper defense may be more than what you achieve through the offensive action, though both aspects exist," Barak said.



http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/0 ... HM20120606



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Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:33 am
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Post Re: Flame virus threatens global computer security
Thanks for posting this, Sky. I read this interesting article on MSNBC yesterday and forgot to post it!

Is Flame virus fallout a Chinese, Russian plot to control the Internet?

By Bob Sullivan

Has the U.S. government been caught with its virtual hands in the world's cookie jar? And might it lose control of the Internet as a consequence?

If you were among the forces on the planet wanting to wrest control of the Internet from the U.S.-friendly agencies that manage it, that's the story you'd surely want to tell.

But things are rarely what they seem. The barrage of Flame news – including word that Flame and Stuxnet appear to have common authorship -- should not be viewed in a vacuum.

A group of nations led by China, Russia and several Middle Eastern countries would love to see the end of U.S. dominance over the operational control of the Internet, and these nations think they have found their vehicle for accomplishing that: A U.N. body called the International Telecommunications Union.

The organization, which manages international telephony agreements, will meet in Dubai in December and attempt to extend its charter to take operational control of the Internet away from the U.S.-dominated nonprofit International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

Even as news of Flame first hit, an ITU working group was meeting in Geneva to finalize the agenda for the Dubai meeting. At almost the same time, there was a hearing in an obscure congressional subcommittee where experts rang alarm bells about an ITU coup.

The argument that the U.S. should not be in a position of power as far as overseeing the Internet will be bolstered by a world set aflame by news that the U.S. may have exploited its technological advantage to attack sovereign nations with Flame and Stuxnet.

Some technology experts say the Dubai meeting could very well decide the direction of the world's most valuable resource - information - for the rest of the 21st century: The future of Internet anonymity, free speech and perhaps freedom itself could be at stake.

"I think there is a political story that is being missed here," said Chris Bronk, a former State Department official who worked in that agency’s Office of eDiplomacy and is now a professor at Rice University. "There's much more to this. … Stuxnet was better than bombs in the short run, but this could hurt the U.S. down the road.”

Conspiracy theorists -- including several interviewed for this story who requested that their comments remain off the record -- point out that the world learned about Flame from a Moscow-based antivirus company (Kaspersky Labs), and the ITU chose Flame as the subject of its first-ever international cyber-warning, claiming for the first time an important role in cybersecurity affairs. They see the grand publicity surrounding Flame as little more than a power grab by the ITU in advance of the Dubai meeting, dubbed the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT).

“If you want to be cynical, this is definitely a play by an international group to try to gain control over arguably the world’s most valuable resource,” said Paul Rohmeyer, a Stevens Institute of Technology professor who specializes in cybersecurity and international issues, and one of the few members of the conspiracy camp willing to connect the dots publicly.

snip

Read more here: http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12172042-is-flame-virus-fallout-a-chinese-russian-plot-to-control-the-internet?lite

:hmm

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Wed Jun 13, 2012 7:17 am
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