Has Flame become a psychological prop? 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. “This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” the newspaper reported the US official as saying. “Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this [Flame],” confirming that operations were ongoing. “It [Flame] doesn’t mean that other tools aren’t in play or performing effectively,” the official reportedly said.Normally, newspaper reports such as this would be part of the stream of interesting speculation of the sort that has appeared from time to time since Stuxnet’s discovery almost two years ago. That US officials seem to be queuing up to claim responsibility for a cyberweapon most people already believe was the work of the US suggests that the Administration is complimenting software war with a psychological counterpart.The cover blown, the US might now be making the best use of Flame as a warning to Iran of its intent, capability and ingenuity.As several analyses have pointed out, that capability is significant, featuring a large number of different modules, at least five zero day exploits over time, and an innovative attack on the encryption used to secure Microsoft certificates as a way of compromising the Windows Update system.The role of Israel and other countries remains less clear. According to the Washington Post report, Israel used the same Flame independent of US direction during the oil terminal attack, which suggests a looser and less disciplined modus operandi than officials have tried to project.In the US, the revelations about the US’s apparent cyber-weapons programme have already been dismissed by Senator John McCain as part of an attempt by US President Obama to portray himself as being tough on Iran. Related content news Top cybersecurity product news of the week New product and service announcements from Bedrock Security, GitGuardian, Legit Security, Nametag, and Cybereason and Observe By CSO staff Mar 29, 2024 70 mins Generative AI Security news analysis Thousands of servers hacked due to insecurely deployed Ray AI framework Ray deployments are not intended to connect to the internet, but AI developers are doing so anyway and leaving their servers vulnerable. By Lucian Constantin Mar 28, 2024 4 mins Vulnerabilities news Cisco: Security teams are ‘overconfident’ about handling next-gen threats Tooling complexity and generative AI may harm many companies’ security posture. By Jon Gold Mar 28, 2024 3 mins Security brandpost Sponsored by Microsoft Security Iran’s evolving influence operations and cyberattacks support Hamas Understanding how Iranian and Iran-affiliated threats traverse 3 distinct phases may help identify vulnerabilities and attack vectors. By Microsoft Security Mar 28, 2024 5 mins Security PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe