TechWorld: Flame was intelligence-gathering tool for Stuxnet

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Has Flame become a psychological prop?

By John E Dunn
20 June 2012

The Flame cyber-weapon was part of an intelligence-gathering operation designed to aid separate more physically disruptive attacks, the Washington Post has reported anonymous US officials as saying.

If accurate this would posit Flame as the software that made more than one version of Stuxnet (discovered before Flame but now forensically connected to it) the effective tool it turned out to be when wielded against systems at Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.

Flame was so successful at its reconnaissance role that it probably furnished Iran’s enemies - including co-developer Israel - with enough data to attack a wide range of other targets, including a mysterious one reported on the country’s main oil terminal as recently as April.

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