flame malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

We have a lot of information on Stuxnet virus, a powerful malware that for the first time has shown to governments the capabilities and efficiency of a cyber weapon. Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kasperky security firm revealed that Stuxnet had badly infected the internal network of a Russian nuclear plant, according to the information he obtained from an unnamed staffer at the Nuclear Plant. " So unfortunately these people who were responsible for offensive technologies, they recognize cyber weapons as an opportunity ." Kaspersky said. During a presentation given at the Canberra Press Club, Kaspersky provided an excellent overview on the security of cyberspace, in particular highlighting the effect of the activities of state-sponsored espionage and cyber crime. " All the data is stolen, " Kaspersky said. " At least twice ." The malware Stuxnet is widely considered to have been developed by the US Government in a joint work with Israel c

In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel Magazine, American whistleblower Edward Snowden has Confirmed that Stuxnet Malware was developed by NSA and Israel Together. Stuxnet made international headlines in 2010 for specifically target a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran. Stuxnet was designed to make the centrifuges spin out of control and cause physical damage to the plant in Natanz. Stuxnet temporarily disabled 1,000 centrifuges that the Iranians were using to enrich uranium. Asked whether the NSA collaborates with Israel, Snowden said: " Yes, all the time. The NSA has a large section for that, called the FAD - Foreign Affairs Directorate. "  " The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together, " Snowden said when asked if the NSA had any involvement in the Stuxnet program. Last year an even more complex computer virus called Flame was discovered and while initially it was not linked to Stuxnet, further investigation by Kaspersky Labs identified a

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Iranian CERT is sounding the alarm over another bit of data-deleting malware it's discovered on PCs in the country. Dubbed Batchwiper , the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I Drive, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in when it's executed Why naming Batchwiper ?  The name was chosen because the malware is packed in a batch file. The malware initiates its data wiping routine on certain dates, the next one being Jan. 21 2013. However, the dates of Oct. 12, Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, 2012, were also found in the malware's configuration, suggesting that it may have been in distribution for at least two months. GrooveMonitor.exe is the original dropper, which is a self-extracting RAR file, once executed it extracts the following files: -- \WINDOWS\system32\SLEEP.EXE, md5: ea7ed6b50a9f7b31caeea372a327bd37 -- \WINDOWS\system32\jucheck.exe, md5: c4cd216112cbc5b8c046934843c579f6 -- \WIND

The news is sensational, according the French magazine L'Express the offices of France's former president Sarkozy were victim of a cyber attack, but what is even more remarkable is that for the offensive was used the famous malware Flame. On the origin of the malware still persist a mystery, many security experts attribute it to joint work of Israel and US development team. Let's remind that according the analysis on Flame source code conducted by Kaspersky the malware is linked to Stuxnet, a version of the famous virus shared a module with the spy toolkit. Frame is considered one of the most complex spy tool produced by a state sponsored project and its use in the attacks against French government suggests the existence of a cyber espionage campaign to collect sensible information. An official declaration coming from spokesmen of the Elysee Palace and reported by the magazine states: "Hackers have not only managed to get to the heart of French political power,&

The Israeli military has set plans to boost its cyber warfare capabilities with a better Cyber Army by expand its Unit 8200. " It has become clear that the demand for soldiers in this field is growing, which is why we're searching for solutions not only in Israel but abroad as well ," a top officer in the Manpower Directorate. Unit 8200, Israel's equivalent to the NSA, is undergoing a massive expansion. The U.S. Army ad slogan may be: " The Army needs a few good men ." But IDF Unit 8200′s slogan is: " The IDF needs a few good hackers ." Actually not a few, more like hundreds if not thousands. The disclosure comes amid recent reports that the Israeli army is working to enhance its cyber-warfare abilities. Military intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi is slated to invest 2 billion shekels (525 million U.S. dollars) to that end in the coming years. " The military officials are tasked to track "young computer geniuses" and persuade them to immigrate to Israel for

Kaspersky has discovered new malware dubbed ' miniFlame ', cyber espionage software directly linked to Flame. This new nation-state espionage malware that has ties to two previous espionage tools known as Flame and Gauss, and that appears to be a "high-precision, surgical attack tool" targeting victims in Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere. miniFlame, also known as SPE, was found by Kaspersky Lab's experts in July 2012, and was originally identified as a Flame module. But originally MiniFlame seems to be used to gain control of and obtain increased spying capability over select computers originally infected by the Flame and Gauss spyware. According to Kaspersky, versions of miniFlame were created in 2010 and 2011, and some of the six variants are still considered active. It is expected that development of the malicious program could have started as far back as 2007. " MiniFlame is a high precision attack tool ," said Alexander Gostev, Chief Security Expert, Kaspers