Middle East under attack in cyber war discovery

A massive cyber attack against Middle Eastern nations capable of sweeping up huge amounts of sensitive data has been discovered by security researchers who said it was most likely a state-sponsored spying attempt.

Researchers at the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, which announced its findings on the so-called Flame software yesterday, said it was the most complex discovered yet and could have been in operation for five years.

More than 600 computers belonging to governments, businesses and individuals in Iran, Israel and Palestinian territories, as well as Sudan and Syria, were affected. It is not known where the attack originated but its discovery – just two years after security experts uncovered the Stuxnet virus, which attacked the Iranian nuclear infrastructure – raises fresh questions over alleged government use of malicious software to spy on foreign nations.

Flame is the third "super cyberweapon" to come to light after Stuxnet and the latter's data-stealing cousin, Duqu, which was found last year. "The only logical conclusion is that there are other operations," Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at Kaspersky, said.