Intriguing Twist to Flame Attack

It seems like those who scarred the world with flame are now providing us the way out themselves. According to researchers, those command and control servers which were directing Flame, have sent a command to all the affected computers to self destruct itself. Through the command, Flame malware completely deleted itself from all the attacked computers. Hence it is believed that Flame is now on its path to self destruction.

Why was this done? That question remains intriguingly unanswered, although it is vastly believed that perhaps the creators were afraid of being caught. The cyber security experts had started their investigation and were able to shut down a lot of command and control servers of Flame. The command for self destruction has been sent after the creators realized that their dangerous malware had been exposed to the experts. Time and further investigation might expose what Flame creators have in store for us later on.

The command sent for deletion of the malware was able to remove a lot of files. It also affected the cram disks that were filled with a lot of random characters and this led to the computer recovering its original code. As for the question regarding the number of computers that were hacked in through Flame still seems to be unanswered and hence the extent of damage is yet uncalculated.

Flame is no ordinary malware and it can do a lot of damage to the affected parties. It is almost like a very advanced weapon being used in a cyber war. According to Kaspersky Lab, which is famous around the world for being one of the best producers of antivirus software, the Flame software is almost 20 times bigger than Stuxnet.

Flame is able to get information stored in the computers that it attacks and then sent this information back to its controllers. The malware is even able to use Bluetooth technology in order to connect with wireless devices such as tablets and take information stored on those devices as well. The kind of information Flame can steal goes from keystrokes to screen images to even listening to conversations taking place through microphones of the computers.

The Flame malware has been targeting energy facilities around the Middle East for the past two years or perhaps longer than that. Its prime targets have been the energy facilities of Iran, creating the speculations that U.S. authorities are the creators who might also be working alongside with Israeli authorities. The objective is obviously to steal whatever information can be taken regarding the nuclear plans of Iran. Apart from Iran the countries affected are Lebanon, Hungary, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Austria and Hong Kong.

Although at the moment Flame is self destructing itself but could it wake up any other day and the security analysts believe that a similar malware could also be created soon which will target the sensitive institutions of the West because of the believe that Flame was created by U.S. and Israel.

Related article: Internet Threat Volumes Overwhelm Security Companies

» SPAMfighter News - 6/14/2012