30 Nations call on Iran to help defend against Cyberwar launched by US-Israel

IT official: 30 countries ask Iran for help to combat ‘Flame’
2 June, 2012 – Shia Post

Iran says 30 countries have asked it for help in fighting Flame, a computer programme designed to steal data. Australia, the Netherlands, India and Malaysia are among the countries that have contacted Iran’s Maher Centre to ask for the anti-virus programme that detects and destroys Flame.

The Maher Centre (Maher means ‘expert’ in Persian) is part of the Information Technology Company (ITC).

The ITC discovered Flame over a month ago and has been working on an anti-virus programme since then said Esmail Radkani the organisation’s deputy director.

“Detecting and writing a programme to wipe out Flame was especially complex,” said Mr. Radkani.

Flame is the third programme to have targeted Iran for the purpose of gathering information, or attacking a specific system.

In 2010, Iran’s industrial and nuclear computer systems were attacked by the Stuxnet worm. The worm was a malware designed to infect computers using Siemens Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), a control system favoured by industries that manage water supplies, oil rigs and power plants.

Stuxnet was followed by Duqu, a virus designed to gather data for future cyber-attacks. Iran announced the discovery of Duqu in November 2011.

Flame seems to have been created with the express purpose of gathering information. Experts believe it could have been running for as long as five years before it was discovered. …more