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...

Flame Attackers Used Collision Attack to Forge Microsoft Certificate

The attackers behind the Flame malware used a collision attack against a cryptographic algorithm as part of the method for gaining a forged certificate to sign specific components of the attack tool. Microsoft officials said on Tuesday that it’s imperative for customers to install the update issu...

The Vienna Connection? Trying To Stamp Out Flame, Researchers Find Clues To Its Origins

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab, domain registrar GoDaddy and OpenDNS have taken steps to cut off Internet access for machines infected with the Flame worm. In the process, the researchers say they uncovered a large and complex command and control infrastructure of more than 80 Web domains and...

Flame Malware Spread Via Rogue Microsoft Security Certificates

Flame Malware Spread Via Rogue Microsoft Security Certificates Microsoft released an emergency Windows update on Sunday after revealing that one of its trusted digital signatures was being abused to certify the validity of the Flame malware that has infected computers in Iran and other Middle...

Flame Malware Uses Forged Microsoft Certificate to Validate Components

Microsoft has found that some components of the Flame malware were signed using a forged digital certificate that the attackers were able to create by exploiting a weakness in the way that Microsoft’s Terminal Services allows customers to sign code with Microsoft certificates. The company has sen...

DNS Client Flame Infection

Binary data 7058.pasl...

Flame Malware Raises Need for Open Talk on Use of Cyberweapons

The discovery of the Flame malware has raised a number of questions, some mundane, some interesting and many unanswerable at this point. But the point that’s most interesting also is the one that likely will go unaddressed for the foreseeable future, and that is, the need for a serious, open...

DHS Says No Evidence That Flame Targets Industrial Systems, But Urges Caution

In and advisory, the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial control System ICS CERT said that it doesn’t believe the Flame malware targets industrial control systems ICS or SCADA systems, but the group advised critical infrastructure owners to be on alert. The advisory, issued Wednesday,...

Behind the Flame Malware

The Flame malware has garnered a lot of attention in the last few days, but there’s also been quite a lot of confusion about what it can do and what its implications are. In this video from PBS Newshour, Dave Shackleford of IANS and Catherine Lotrionte of Georgetown University discuss the worm’s...

News Roundup: What The Experts Are Saying About The Flame Worm

UPDATE: Are the winds of cyber war blowing, or is the newly discovered Flame worm just a tempest in a teapot? Just days after it was disclosed to the public, the Flame worm is fanning the flames of controversy within the security world. Threatpost takes a look at what people are saying. Calling...