Analysis Shows Traces of Wiper Malware, But No Links to Flame

One of the things about the investigation into the Flame malware that’s remained unclear for several months now is what ever became of the so-called Wiper virus that had been seen erasing data on machines in Iran and that led researchers to eventually discover Flame. No actual samples of Wiper ha...

New Report Beckons 'Cyber Arms Race,' Explains Black Hole Kit

Espionage has gone digital and we’re just now seeing the beginnings of what will prove to be a “cyber arms race,” according to Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer for the F-Secure, the Finnish security firm. Hypponen laid out his thoughts and recapped the last seven months in threats in the...

Analysis Reveals Flame Malware's Process Injection Tricks

As researchers continue to pull apart the Gauss malware code, looking for spreading mechanisms and infection vectors, there is still some work being done on Gauss’s cousin Flame, as well. New research from CERT Polska reveals how deeply Flame burrows itself into infected systems, showing that the...

Infographic: Stuxnet's Cyberwar Vines Untangled

Keeping track of the relationships between various malware families can be hard, especially when you’re talking about espionage tools such as Stuxnet and Gauss. Veracode has put together an infographic as a general recap of the life and times of Stuxnet, the much-discussed cyber worm that first...

New Gauss Malware, Descended From Flame and Stuxnet, Found On Thousands of PCs in Middle East

A new piece of malware dubbed Gauss, that experts say is a direct descendant of Flame and also related to Stuxnet and Duqu, has been found on thousands of PCs in the Middle East, mostly in Lebanon. Gauss contains some of the same code as Flame, but is markedly different in a number of respects,...

Microsoft Revokes Trust in 28 of Its Own Certificates

UPDATED–In the wake of the Flame malware attack, which involved the use of a fraudulent Microsoft digital certificate, the software giant has reviewed its certificates and found nearly 30 that aren’t as secure as the company would like and has revoked them. Microsoft also released its new updater...

Microsoft Plans To Fix 16 Vulnerabilities With July Patch Release

Microsoft has announced it will issue nine bulletins for its July Patch Tuesday release next week. Included in the update are three critical patches for security holes that, if left unaddressed, could result in remote code execution on vulnerable systems. In all, the Redmond, Washington company...

Iran Discovers "Massive Cyber Attack," Points Finger at US, UK, Israel

Iran’s intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi claims the country has uncovered a “massive cyber attack” it believes was jointly launched by the United States, England and Israel, according to reports from PressTV, Iran’s state-owned English language news network, yesterday. “Based on obtained...

US and Israel developed Flame Malware against Iran

US and Israel developed Flame Malware against Iran Unnamed Western officials confirmed that Flame was developed by US and Israeli governments. The United States and Israel jointly developed the Flame computer virus that collected intelligence to help slow Iran's nuclear program. The massive piece...

What Have We Learned: Flame Malware

When the news about the Flame malware first broke several weeks ago, people from all parts of the security community, political world and elsewhere quickly began trying to figure out what the significance of the tool was and whether it represented anything new. That was difficult at the time, giv...

Honeynet Project Launches 'Ghost' To Snare USB Malware

The Honeynet Project launched a new project Thursday that is designed to snare malware that spreads by infecting removable USB universal serial bus storage drives, citing the increased reliance of malicious programs on portable drives to move from computer to computer. The ghost-usb-honeypot uses...

Microsoft Releases Automatic Updater for Certificate Revocation Lists, Plans to Invalidate Short RSA Keys

As part of its response to the Flame malware and its usage of a forged Microsoft certificate to sign malicious files, Microsoft has changed the way that Windows handles certificates, releasing an automatic updater function that will recognize and flag untrusted certificates. The new functionality...

Attorney General Holder Announces Probe Into Cyberwar Leaks

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has issued an assignment to the U.S. District Attorneys to start an investigation into possible leaks of classified information, presumably by individuals within the Obama administration who recently spoke anonymously about the administration’s ties to the...

Diving Into Flame, Researchers Find A Link To Stuxnet

Researchers digging through the code of the recently discovered Flame worm say they have come across a wealth of evidence that suggests Flame and the now-famous Stuxnet worm share a common origin. Researchers from Kaspersky Lab say that a critical module that the Flame worm used to spread is...

Flame spy virus going to Suicide

Flame spy virus going to Suicide The creators of the world's most complicated espionage virus Flame have sent a 'suicide' command that removes it from some infected computers. U.S. computer security researchers said on Sunday that the Flame computer virus, which struck at least 600 specific...

Attackers Can Use 'Self-Destruct' Feature to Kill Flame

The attackers behind Flame can easily clean up compromised computers, according to research by security firm Symantec who found that some attackers have been able to use command-and-control C&C servers to completely remove the malware from certain machines. According to a post on Symantec’s...

How The Flame Malware Stayed Hidden For So Long

The past week has brought to light more revelations about the mysterious Flame or sKyWIper worm that was first identified at the end of May. Among them: the eye-popping admission from Microsoft that the malware’s authors found a way to use that company’s Windows Update feature to distribute the...

Snack Attack: Analyzing Flame's Replication Pattern

The Flame malware uses several methods to replicate itself. The most interesting one is the use of the Microsoft Windows Update service. This is implemented in Flame’s “SNACK”, “MUNCH” and “GADGET” modules. Being parts of Flame, these modules are easily reconfigurable. The behavior of these modul...

Microsoft Details Flame Hash-Collision Attack

The details of the collision attack used by the Flame malware authors to create a forged code-signing certificate for Microsoft code are beginning to emerge, and the company said that the attackers used an MD5 hash collision specifically to ensure that their attack would work on machines running...

DHS Issues Joint Warning On Flame's Windows Update Hack

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is warning IT administrators and operators of industry control systems about the danger posed by the Flame aka sKyWIper malware after Microsoft acknowledged that the malware is able to spoof its Windows Update service to push malicious code onto vulnerable...