Flame was scout ahead of Stuxnet attack on Iran nukes - US spooks

Flame was created by the US and Israel in order to collect intelligence on Iranian computer networks as part of the same covert operation that spawned Stuxnet. Anonymous US officials told the Washington Post that Flame was created as part of of the secret programme codenamed Olympic Games. Flame was designed as a means to map …

[David Shaw]

I might have a Flame too

for my work I bought a Software Development platform which included a US Military licensed stack of JTRS softwares for Software Defined Radio. I bought it from a Canadian company, through a French distributor.

I was very surprised when the Hewlett Packard workstation was delivered, with the outer shipping box airwaybill indicating that the workstation's last physical address before getting to my lab was a software company in Tel Aviv. I googled the software company in Tel Aviv and was impressed by their claims of 'military that', 'security solution this'; just WTF were they doing with my workstation?! I put it in a cupboard and it is still there. I switched our humanitarian radar development to open-source GNUradio software & hardware.

"Iran was targeted", really, - my lab is in deepest EU!!!

[ItsNotMe]

Re: I might have a Flame too

If ANYONE thinks for one nano-second that this sort of cyber warfare is not being done by the UK...and every other government on the planet...then they are delusional.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: I might have a Flame too

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/blackmail.html

[Jeebus]

Re: I might have a Flame too

I was hoping for actual evidence, and proof and you gave me a conspiracy nutcase site.

*sigh* this place is seriously losing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

So...

...both have nuclear weapons, both have biological weapons, both ignore international treaties, both ignore UN resolutions, and now both apparently actively engage in cyber-warfare against a sovereign nation.

Remind me - who are the bad guys again?

[Naughtyhorse]

Re: So...

can only upvote once!

of course what you are forgetting is that we have god on our side, in fact god is some of oursides dad!

so we can do whatever the fuck we like and _still_ be the good guys.

toby ziegler got it right (and soooooooo wrong) "They'll like us when we win!"

it's a bit much to be constantly standing on the sidelines shouting 'come on the other guy' maybe someone shoud do something about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So...

As they say History is written by the winners.

If the Axis had won WW2, Israel wouldn't exist, Churchill would of been hung as a war criminal for the Dresden bombings (amongst other things) and the concentration camps solved many of the worlds problems....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So...

You forgot to add - we would have been taught about Stalin as the initiator of the holocaust.

The other holocaust - the one that is usually not mentioned as there are not that many survivors of USSR republic No 16 - the "Soviet Jewish Republic". There are even fewer survivors from the ones who happened to have been both jewish and had a RKP(b) party card.

That is not surprising as most of them also remembered who really was Stalin in 1917 and prior to that.

[eulampios]

Re: So...

Stalin was an indiscriminate killer. The majority of victims were the same as in the WWII: mostly Slavic nations of USSR.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So...

"Remind me - who are the bad guys again?"

It's a close run thing, but I guess it's the ones whose leader has publicly stated a policy of wiping another country and all its people off the map.

If that's the sort of indicator you're looking for then the answer to your question is Iran.

Iran has since denied that Ahmadinejad's speech at the World Without Zionism conference amounted to a physical threat. However we now find that they're busily building a number of suspicious nuclear facilities and even the Russians seem to have become worried. I can't think of a more powerful sign of trouble ahead than a worried Russian.

Hopefully we will be very fortunate and the situation settles down with nothing more scary than Stuxnet and Flame happening. If it does come to open warfare the result for everyone (probably especially Iran) is going to be a whole lot worse than what appears to be a very restricted cyber war.

The worst thing in the world is a delusional country that thinks it's got an unbeatable military capability which psychs itself up enough to start a war. Germany and Japan both made that mistake. The USA thought that 'big military' was the same as unbeatable, and lost in Vietnam. I'm sure Britain's done something similar in its history several times (Afghanistan in the 1800s?). Argentina with the Falklands. The USSR in Afghanistan. Spain with its armada. Napoleon versus everyone else. Indonesia in Borneo. History is pretty clear on the point - starting a conflict is not a good way of guaranteeing success.

[dotdavid]

LOCOG take notice

"Flame was created as part of of the secret programme codenamed Olympic Games"

Those anonymous spooks might laugh in the face of Iran's wrath, but let's just see how they face the mind-numbing terror of THE TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT LAWYERS!

Bwahaha etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

_NSAKEY

Clever malware for Windows, from the country MS resides in. Any more to add to the _NSAKEY debate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine what we have now.

[Stevie]

Bah!

But why leak this, now, so close to an election...oh, I get it.

Well played "unknown" persons.

[Destroy All Monsters]

So they hoovered up all that info and are still sure that there is no foul work going on about trying to build nukes? With the only hints coming from the "smoking laptop" sourced from Israel sourced from the MEK, which are our slightly cultish nutty terrorists (soon to be either abandoned to the tender mercies of Maliki's SS guard or else taken off the list of terrorist organizations for a financial shot-in-the-arm; with Amurrica you never know what is coming.)

And politicians are still behaving like the sky will be falling any minute now. So what's the deal here? Yeah I know, keep the panic kettle going to keep the voting retards in line.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the deal?

"And politicians are still behaving like the sky will be falling any minute now. So what's the deal here? Yeah I know, keep the panic kettle going to keep the voting retards in line."

I'll give you a hint, someone's sitting on a lot of black stuff that someone else wants.

[Elmer Phud]

Cyber Terrorists

As I can't tell anymore who I'm supposed to trust I'm going to revert to ol' time security and see if Amazon do tin foil hats (I just checked on ebay and couldn't find one).

It actually makes you wonder what the hell yer AV doesn't pick up.