It slices and dices . . .

SLAP CHOP THIS AIN'T. It's a piece of malware called "Flame". And what a piece it is: compared to Stuxnet, the malware that gutted the digital controllers for Iranian uranium centrifuges, a smallest-you-can-make-it 500Kb, Flame is Godzilla-size, a whopping 20Mb. According to the article in WIRED, "Meet ‘Flame’, The Massive Spy Malware Infiltrating Iranian Computers", Flame is like a Cuisinart, with function modules for slicing, dicing.

Vince, baby
doin' his Slap Chop shtick.

A scary amount of creative thought went into building this nasty. While it's "large", it's a high-speed web-world/intranet/LAN/Bluetooth world, so a 20 Mb download can slip through quite easily to a targeted computer. Unlike just about every other piece of malware found to date, Flame has some discretion in just which machines will get a dose in their DOS, so to speak.

Among Flame’s many modules is one that turns on the internal microphone of an infected machine to secretly record conversations that occur either over Skype or in the computer’s near vicinity; a module that turns Bluetooth-enabled computers into a Bluetooth beacon, which scans for other Bluetooth-enabled devices in the vicinity to siphon names and phone numbers from their contacts folder; and a module that grabs and stores frequent screenshots of activity on the machine, such as instant-messaging and email communications, and sends them via a covert SSL channel to the attackers’ command-and-control servers.
The malware also has a sniffer component that can scan all of the traffic on an infected machine’s local network and collect usernames and password hashes that are transmitted across the network. The attackers appear to use this component to hijack administrative accounts and gain high-level privileges to other machines and parts of the network.

Good to know that's all
they're looking for.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (aka I-Need-A-Dinner-Jacket) and the mullahs of Qom must be feeling a little transparent, these days, but chances are they're starting to feel a little better, Iran’s Computer Emergency Response Team just announced that it had developed a detector to uncover what it calls the “Flamer” malware on infected machines and delivered it to select organizations at the beginning of May. Problem is, Flame has been probably burning for over two years; it's not on a lot of computers — they hope. Malware's like murder: the perfect ones you never know about.


Now, why the hell should you care? Well, suppose Vickie's people decided that Canada needed a "Maple Flame" for domestic consumption? Remember, while they may be rude and crude, Vickie and the gang brought us Robo-calls and other digital folderol, and it seems they have a knack for creating enemies lists, and Flame is used in a targeted fashion. Forewarned is five-armed; even paranoids have enemies.

Democracy in action . . .

THE GUARDIAN HAS A REPORT, "WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers" that merits your attention. Next week should be of interest as Anonymous' cohort keeps at it. Can they get enough computers together to rattle Amazon, Visa and MasterCard?

Anonymous leaders began distributing software tools to allow anyone with a computer to join Payback. So far more than 9,000 users in the US have downloaded the software; in second place is the UK with 3,000. Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Spain, Poland, Russia and Australia follow with more than 1,000. The 11th country embroiled in the attacks is Sweden, where WikiLeaks's massive underground servers are housed, with 75 downloads.

Sean-Paul Correll, a cyber threat analyst at Panda Security, who has monitored Operation Payback since its conception, said it was impossible to "profile" those involved. "They are anonymous and they are everywhere," he said. "They have day jobs. They are adults and kids. It is just a bunch of people." Middle-class professional members working alongside self-styled anarchists.

Is There a Chiropractor in the House ? ? ? ?

This vs this.

It appears the current government's spending priorities need a fiscal adjustment . . . .

Boogityboogity Dep't.:

ZERO HEDGE is a financial site, that looks at the financial world a little differently than most, as indicated by their slogan, which you can see above. Anyway, Tyler Durden has a report, "DEADF007 - Is Stuxnet The Secret Weapon To Attack Iran's Nukes; Is A Virus About To Revolutionize Modern Warfare?".

Yikes! Even paranoids have enemies, but this does not seem to be tinfoil hat time; it seems somebody went to quite a bit of trouble to create this beastie that is infesting computers in the Middle East especially. Who's gonna get stuck by Stuxnet? Is it designed to rain on Ineedadinnerjacket's parade? (H/T to Helmut at Defend-Net.)

Since reverse engineering chunks of Stuxnet's massive code, senior US cyber security experts confirm what Mr. Langner, the German researcher, told the Monitor: Stuxnet is essentially a precision, military-grade cyber missile deployed early last year to seek out and destroy one real-world target of high importance – a target still unknown.

"Stuxnet is a 100-percent-directed cyber attack aimed at destroying an industrial process in the physical world," says Langner, who last week became the first to publicly detail Stuxnet's destructive purpose and its authors' malicious intent. "This is not about espionage, as some have said. This is a 100 percent sabotage attack."