{"id":11644,"date":"2012-08-09T14:45:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T21:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=11644"},"modified":"2012-08-09T14:45:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-09T21:45:33","slug":"cyber-spying-and-cyber-espionage-rampant-as-us-israel-move-to-full-on-cyber-war-in-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=11644","title":{"rendered":"Cyber-spying and Cyber-espionage rampant as US-Israel move to &#8220;full-on&#8221; Cyber-war in Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>New Middle East super-virus uncovered<\/strong><br \/>\n9 August, 2012 &#8211; A Akhbar<\/p>\n<p>A new &#8220;state-sponsored&#8221; cyber surveillance virus dubbed &#8220;Gauss&#8221; has stolen passwords and key data from thousands of bank users in the Middle East, the top IT security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>According to Kaspersky, Gauss was a complete and &#8220;complex, nation-state sponsored cyber-espionage toolkit,&#8221; which aims to steal sensitive data, with a specific focus on browser passwords and online banking account details.<\/p>\n<p>It has similarities to Stuxnet and Flame, the Russian company said in a statement, noting that although the new malware program was discovered in June 2012 it appears to have been in use since September 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Gauss has the same source code as Flame, which was apparently designed to steal information from Iran&#8217;s suspected nuclear program, with the United States and Israel suspected of being behind its origination<\/p>\n<p>Stuxnet was used to attack Iran&#8217;s nuclear centrifuges.<\/p>\n<p>Kaspersky said Gauss had a specific focus on banking and financial data and its Trojan capability was used to steal detailed information about infected PCs including browser history, cookies, passwords, and system configurations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is also capable of stealing access credentials for various online banking systems and payment methods,&#8221; said Kaspersky, whose virus detection experts discovered and named Gauss.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2012, command and control servers used by Gauss&#8217;s unknown originators stopped functioning, according to the statement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Analysis of Gauss shows it was designed to steal data from several Lebanese banks including the Bank of Beirut, EBLF, BlomBank, ByblosBank, FransaBank and Credit Libanais,&#8221; and also &#8220;targets users of Citibank and PayPal,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p>Gauss&#8217;s main module was named by its creators after the German mathematician Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, according to Kaspersky. <a href=\"http:\/\/english.al-akhbar.com\/content\/new-middle-east-super-virus-uncovered\" target=\"_blank\"> &#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D11644&amp;text=Cyber-spying+and+Cyber-espionage+rampant+as+US-Israel+move+to+%22full-on%22+Cyber-war+in+Middle+East&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Middle East super-virus uncovered 9 August, 2012 &#8211; A Akhbar A new &#8220;state-sponsored&#8221; cyber surveillance virus dubbed &#8220;Gauss&#8221; has stolen passwords and key data from thousands of bank users in the Middle East, the top IT security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday. According to Kaspersky, Gauss was a complete and &#8220;complex, nation-state sponsored <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=11644#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3343],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11645,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11644\/revisions\/11645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}