Iran Says Flame Virus Is Contained
Following a Washington Post report indicating that the United States and Israel collaborated in developing the Flame computer virus in order to delay Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian Minister of Communications and Technology announced that it has identified and overcome this malware.
The Fars News Agency reports that Minister Reza Taghipour described such internet attacks at “state terrorism” and said: “Such attacks are carried out by certain governments, while before this, most attacks were done by individual hackers.”
He accused Israel of being the main developer of the malware, adding that “some Western countries are also lending their support to it.” He added that the Islamic Republic has already protested against such behaviour at the information technology summit in Geneva and hopes that a mechanism to deal with the issue will be put into place at subsequent summits.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the CIA joined forces with Israel’s military to develop the sophisticated computer virus Flame, aimed especially at Iran’s nuclear activities.
The Post quoted officials saying “the massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran’s computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyber warfare campaign.”
Last month, the Russian computer security company Kaspersky announced the discovery of the new Flame virus, aimed at computer systems in the Middle East.
The Washington Post report indicated that the Stuxnet virus, another malware that was found in Iran’s industrial computer systems two years ago, also sprang from the U.S.-Israeli collaboration.
