Symantec Says Virus Will Flame Attack Middle East Countries

Posted by Bimo Hery Prabowo On Selasa, 29 Mei 2012 0 comments
Not only anti-virus vendor Kaspersky warned that the virus of Flame, which is called the most advanced malware. Symantec also issued a similar warning and called malware is targeting the Middle East region. Symantec Security Response team revealed that the Flame was created with the ability to obtain information from an infected system, located mostly in the Middle East.

"Like the two previous viruss, the code is not made by an individual but a group of people who financed and get instructions. Code includes several references to the series 'Flame' which might indicate an attack examples from some parts of the code or the name of the malware development projects , "said Symantec.

Ironically, the attack has been running quietly for at least two years with the ability to steal the documents, take a screenshot of the desktop user, spreading through USB drives, disable the security vendor products, and in certain conditions, pass it to other systems.

"The virus of Flame may also have the ability to utilize some of the known vulnerabilities and patches on the Microsoft Windows in order to pass it on to the network," Symantec said.

The first telemetry indicated that the target of this virus are located mostly in the West Bank of Palestine, Hungary, Iran and Lebanon. Other targets, including Russia, Austria, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. Industrial sectors or individual targets current affiliation is unclear. However, preliminary evidence suggests that victims may not be targeted for the same reason. Most of these targets is the personal activities of individuals, rather than their employers. Interestingly, in addition to targeting specific companies, many of which attacked the computer systems that use of the Internet connection at home.

"Internet Security virus Report from Symantec's latest 17 estimated that the attack targeted and APT will continue to be a serious problem, and the frequency and sophistication of these attacks will increase," said Symantec.

Previously, Kaspersky called Flame as the most sophisticated computer virus created by the government and accused of a country.

"Flame is not designed to steal money from bank accounts. This virus is also different than a simple hack and malware tool that is used by hacktivist. So, to the exclusion of cyber criminals and hacktivist, we conclude that this virus is likely to come from third parties," wrote Alexander Gostev, researchers Kaspersky security.

"It seems the creator of Flame find all sorts of intelligence data - emails, documents, messages, discussions on the sensitive location, everything," he said.