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Meet Flame Espionage Malware Cousin: MiniFlame
Suspected Flame module turns out to be standalone attack code in use since at least 2010, described as targeted cyberweapon for conducting in-depth surveillance and espionage
Ongoing teardowns of the Flame malware and its underlying components have yielded a surprising discovery: a new piece of malware.
Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab said that what they previously suspected was an attack module for the Flame malware is instead a standalone piece of attack code, although it can do double duty as a plug-in for both the Flame and Gauss malware. Designed for data theft and for providing attackers with direct access to an infected system, MiniFlame is based on the same architectural platform as Flame, according to Kaspersky Lab.
"MiniFlame is a high-precision attack tool," said Alexander Gostev, chief security expert at Kaspersky Lab, in an emailed statement. "Most likely it is a targeted cyberweapon used in what can be defined as the second wave of a cyberattack ... to conduct more in-depth surveillance and cyber-espionage."
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