Considering that Flame and Stuxnet have been gunning at Iran for a while, it should come as no suprise that there’s another cyberweapon lurking in the shadows. This one’s been dubbed ‘Gauss’ and it’s harvesting bank account information.
Discovered by researchers at Kasperky Labs, Gauss is yet another cyber-spying weapon built on the Flame platform, and has been stealing the account information of customers at several Lebanon-based banks. It seems that Gauss has been at work since late 2011, and has compromised at least 2500 computers, more than two thirds of which are in Lebanon.
The presumed goal of the weapon is to put a stranglehold on-or at least keep track of-funds that are likely to be funding the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria. With the discovery of yet another sophisticated cyberweapon, it seems pretty clear that the U.S. has its cyber-guns blazing all over the place. Gauss appears to be locked down a little more tightly than the other weaponised viruses turning up in this arsenal. And unlike Stuxnet, it doesn’t seem to self-replicate. Still, it’s yet another piece of the US cyber-espionage iceberg, and it probably won’t be the last one to surface. [Securelist via AllThingsD]
Image: Michelangelus/Shutterstock