UN to warn member nations on risk of Flame virus
UN to warn member nations on risk of Flame virus


A United Nations agency charged with helping member nations secure their national infrastructures plans to issue a sharp warning about the risk of the Flame virus that was recently discovered by Kaspersky Lab in Iran and other parts of the Middle East.


Marco Obiso, cyber security coordinator for the U.N.'s Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union said that "This is the most serious (cyber) warning we have ever put out," The confidential warning will tell member nations that the Flame virus is a dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure, he said in an interview.


Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010 (also found and deactivated by Kaspersky Lab).


"I think it is a much more serious threat than Stuxnet," Obiso said.
He said the ITU would set up a program to collect data, including virus samples, to track Flame's spread around the globe and observe any changes in its composition.


Kaspersky Lab said it found the Flame infection after the ITU asked our company to investigate recent reports from Tehran that a mysterious virus was responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.
Source - Kaspersky - Facebook Page