Israel has admitted that it uses cyberspace to attack its enemies and reports in the NYTIMES have confirmed that US was also a part of the STUXNET infiltration (a worm that infiltrated industrial systems of the German company Siemens, apparently to disrupt uranium enrichment in Iran.)of Iran’s sensitive Nuclear programme.
US , Israel in cyber wars against countries
More about the Stuxnet Worm ( virus)
Other worms in the “spotlight”
Duqu virus
Shamoon
Flame virus
A Israeli website said it was “for the first time” revealing a document recently written by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Operations Department, detailing the goals and methods of its cyber warfare.
The website said it had been using cyberspace for intelligence gathering and “will” also use it “to execute attacks” and “clandestine” operations.
Australia Vulnerable to Cyber attacks
The chief executive of security firm Kaspersky Lab has warned that Australia cannot defend itself from the rising tide of cyber attacks from foreign powers, the best of which come from Russia and China. Mr Kaspersky said Russian malware continued to be the world’s best at attacking systems and it was largely created by criminal gangs
A report in The New York Times by David E. Sanger, based on the book Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, published, said American President Barack Obama ordered the computer virus program, begun during the Bush administration, be ramped up.
Eugene Kaspersky chief executive of security firm Kaspersky Lab said “Most attacks come from China and most criminal malware is written in Chinese. “The second most used language is Portuguese . . . and that’s most probably Brazil. “The third most popular language is Russian, which means it comes from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Baltic countries.”
The statement comes immediately after one of the world’s top virus-hunting agencies Kapersky said it discovered a virus codenamed Flame on computers in Iran and several Middle East countries.
Kaspersky Lab compared Flame to Duqu and Stuxnet, two other virus programs that targeted Iran.
This Advanced Malicious Virus was designed to carry out cyber espionage by stealing images, audio conversations and other data, and had been in use for more than two years( since 2010) in the open without being noticed.
Flame targets computers running the Windows operating system and apparently spreads through infected thumb drives, websites and manipulated emails.
The Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said most infections (189) were found in Iran, and, although other infections (98) were also found in Israel.
Media reports from kapersky have reported that China and Russia are the originators of the most cyber attacks (including state sponsored) and viurs attacks on computers.
