Brothers in cyber arms? That seems to be the case for the notorious Flame and Stuxnet malware programs. Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs on Monday announced its researchers found a key piece of Flame code within an early version of Stuxnet, the separate cyber weapon that damaged an Iranian nuclear facility back in 2010.
That leads Kaspersky’s researchers to the alarming conclusion that Flame was “probably created specifically to operate as part of Stuxnet,” and that the development teams behind the two programs, although distinct, probably collaborated. The New York Times recently reported that Stuxnet was a joint U.S-Israeli operation aimed at hampering Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
