By Jason Ditz | AntiWar.com

Image: Source - TopNewsToday.org

Image: Source

It is perhaps the most sophisticated piece of malicious software ever designed – a digital surveillance device so complex it ran on sensitive government computer networks for years, undetected.

And now, a tool that was almost certainly developed for state-sanctioned cyberwarfare is out in the open, soon to make its way into the hands of everyone from computer virus researchers to criminal gangs.

[...]

Given the complexity of the software, it likely took Flame’s authors millions of dollars and years of development to build. But now, Mr. Kellermann cautioned, what was a highly secret piece of software is going to find its way to the Web’s black market.

“The second it’s discovered, you’ll start to see immediate replication of this attack code in the underground,” he said. “If it was a nation state [that built Flame], now Joe the hacker and his friends can replicate this themselves.”

[...]

“You can immediately eliminate certain parties,” said Vikram Thakur, principal security response manager at computer security software producer Symantec. “Who would want to run a long-standing campaign against individuals in the Middle East? Who would have the funding to sustain this for years? You can pretty much eliminate the basement hacker from being the potential author.”