By Steve Huff 11/08/12 5:11pm

Hack Hack Hack Hack It Apart

Stuxnet's command and control. (Krebs On Security)

Out in the Wild, Government-Created Stuxnet Virus Now Infecting Corporations

In Stephen King’s apocalyptic horror novel The Stand, a government-created virus escapes into the wild and kills most of the people on Earth. About two years ago, a similar scenario almost came true–but, fortunately for living creatures the bug was the U.S.-and-Israeli-made Stuxnet malware. The unintended victim was Chevron’s computer network.

Stuxnet was the highly sophisticated worm that successfully infiltrated Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants in 2010. According to The Wall Street Journal, Stuxnet wasted no time infecting friends as well as foes: Read More

By Steve Huff 8/10/12 11:42am

Flame I'm Gonna Live Forever

Mr. Kaspersky not looking supervillain-like at all. (Photo: flickr.com/cebitaus

Kaspersky Lab IS ON IT: Discovers Yet Another Computer Virus Aimed at the Middle East

Eugene Kaspersky’s security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have sleuthed out a new “cyber-espionage weapon.” The Russian supervillain’s (or awesomely cool billionaire, depending on your point of view) labs say this weapon has nearly as cool a name as previously discovered cyber worms Flame and Duqu–”Gauss.” It also has a specific and potentially telling target: Lebanese lending institutions. Bloomberg tells us more: Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 6/08/12 3:43pm

This Message Will Self-Destruct In 3...

Sorry, we can't help ourselves. (http://commons.wikimedia.org/)

In Fitting Mission Impossible-Style Conclusion, Flame Malware Self-Destructs

Could the Flame malware infection be any more straight out of a spy movie? Answer: nope. Ars Technica reports that attackers have now issued a “suicide” command to the infected computers, thereby essentially scrubbing its tracks.

Discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the malware has made headlines because of the eye-catching little detail that, at 20 megabytes, it’s much bigger than the dreaded Stuxnet and designed to collect dirt on the user of the infected machine. That said, it’s not a particularly far-reaching infection, targeting largely computers in the Middle East, including Iran. Unsurprisingly, it’s thought to be nation-state designed, rather than the work of cyber criminals. Cyber criminals can probably jack your password without designing something that big.  Read More