By Micah Halpern
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a computer virus infected
three hotels in Lausanne, Switzerland. Lausanne is where the nuclear
talks with Iran have been taking place and where they will continue to
take place. The report has set off a maelstrom - throughout Europe, the
Middle East and here at home.
The source for this information is Kaspersky, one of the world's
biggest antivirus companies. Kaspersky found out about the virus
because they themselves were infected.
This virus is called Duqu 2.0. It does no damage. It is an advanced
version of the Duqu virus of 2011which attacked Iran and it is very
similar to the Stuxent virus of 2009-2010. The original Stuxnet
successfully destroyed thousands of Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
Wired Magazine and The New York Times have asserted that Stuxent was a
joint creation of Israel and the United States. From the point of view
of resources, that makes sense.
On home and work computers, malware and worms slow down our systems.
We know that they are there. Not so with this kind of spyware.
Stuxnet, for example, was housed in the BIOS. No one ever even looks in
the BIOS. Most of us don't even know what it is let alone where to
look.
Duqu and Stuxnet are not the only worm warriors in today's ongoing
cyber war. Only the two most glaring and talked about. There are at
least two other very similar and extremely powerful worms that have been
launched. There has been no press coverage of those worms.
They are Viper which came out in 2012 and Flame in 2013.
Kaspersky has said that computer spyware programs as sophisticated
and stealth as these can only be the product of a country dedicated to
cyber warfare. The company asserts that at least 5,000 programmers were
at work designing these cyber weapons. Interestingly, Israel and the
Palestinian Authority have also been hit. Kaspersky says that they have
found the spyware Flame inserted into both Israeli and PA computer
systems.
This brings the number of Stuxnet-type viruses to at least five.
The newly discovered Duqu 2.0 virus uses the computer as a relay. It
can watch and hear everything going on in the room and everything that
is on the computer can be seen and sent to its own home base. The
computer's activation light for the microphone and for the camera are
disabled by Duqu.
The virus takes over the entire computer.
There are only a few companies and governments that have the tools to
even detect this virus. If the code is written well, no one can ever
even know that the spyware was there. It even eliminates its point of
entry making it impossible to find computer patient #ZERO -- the very
first computer that was infected.
Both the Wall Street Journal and Kaspersky imply that Israel is
behind the spying in Lausanne.
The WSJ put it this way: Duqu 2.0 was "a virus widely believed to be used by Israeli spies."
And in their report, Kaspersky referred to Duqu 2.0 as Duqu Bet.
"Bet" is the second letter of the Hebrew language. All letters in the
Hebrew alphabet are assigned numerical value and the numerical value of
"bet" is "two". They are clearly hinting that Israel is behind the
hack. But there is no tangible evidence.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel's deputy foreign minister, the person who is
now effectively the foreign minister, addressed the innuendo during an
interview on Israeli Army Radio. She said: "The international reports
of Israeli involvement in the matter are baseless." She said that this
is a waste of time and the main issue is to prevent a bad deal from
being signed between Iran and the P5+1.
The Duqu 2.0 was also found on the computers of representatives
attending the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Why
there? Why those computers? Because in attendance at that event were
dozens of heads of state, foreign ministers, diplomats and power brokers
and advisers. Several of the people involved in negotiations with Iran
were there. It was the perfect place to infect the phones and
computers of those one (anyone!) would want to spy on.
The Swiss are investigating. The Austrians are investigating because
some of the talks took place in Vienna. The United States has said
that they are aware of the threat and that they are always careful and,
more than that, they will not comment.
One thing is for certain, this is not the work of a lone hacker or
talented high school kid. This attack bears all the markings of a
highly complex worm that cannot be found. This kind of computer spyware
is created by countries - they are called APTs or Advanced Persistent
Threats. They are the most sophisticated and complicated and stealth of
all the computer threats out there.
By the time they are discovered, APTs have already done their harm.
And most of the time, most of them go undetected. They do their job and
then they go dormant. Kaput. All done. Good bye. Until next time.
Micah@MicahHalpern.com
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