Security researchers say they've found a conclusive link between the Flame espionage malware and Stuxnet, the powerful cyberweapon that US and Israeli officials
recently confirmed they designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.
An early version of Stuxnet dating back to 2009 contained executable code that targeted what was then an unknown security flaw in Microsoft Windows, a discovery that brings the number of zero-day vulnerabilities exploited by the malware to at least five, researchers from Kaspersky Lab said Monday morning. Even more significantly, they discovered that a 6MB chunk of code found in the Stuxnet.A (1.0) variant contained the guts of today's Flame. In addition to unearthing previously overlooked data about how Stuxnet hijacked targeted networks, the discovery is important because it establishes the first positive connection between the developers of Stuxnet and those behind Flame, which
came to light two weeks ago as a highly sophisticated espionage platform that targeted computers in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.
