Contradicting assessments by foreign IT security experts, GreenSQL CTO and IT security expert David Maman believes that the Flame virus discovered in Iran and elsewhere was just another example of a fairly simple cyber weapon in the global cyber war.
"The media buzz about the tool is just buzz," Maman told "Globes". He believe that there is no reason to be surprised about the virus's discovery. "It looks a little amateurish, like many other cyber weapons. It is fairly simple. There are dozens like it on the web. The same people and private companies can buy them and do what they want with them."
In contrast to foreign IT security experts, Maman believes that the idea that a government or major defense agency created Flame is not based on the virus's actual structure. "I really do not agree with the assessment by Kaspersky Lab. Such a cyber weapon can be developed by any other group, which could have used it for corporate, or even political, espionage, not necessarily for defense," he says.
Kaspersky Lab says that the cyber weapon mostly attacked in Iran, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel.
Maman: "Kaspersky only reports what it sees. There could definitely be other versions of the cyber weapon directed at other target countries."
Maman adds that the fact that Kaspersky discovered the cyber weapon should raises suspicions among international cyber experts. "How come no American antivirus company, whose research departments are many times more advanced than Kaspersky's, did not discover these Trojan horses. Why did only Russian and Belorussian companies discover them?" he asks.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 29, 2012
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