Eugene Kaspersky’s security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have sleuthed out a new “cyber-espionage weapon.” The Russian supervillain’s (or awesomely cool billionaire, depending on your point of view) labs say this weapon has nearly as cool a name as previously discovered cyber worms Flame and Duqu–“Gauss.” It also has a specific and potentially telling target: Lebanese lending institutions. Bloomberg tells us more:
“Similar to Flame and Duqu, another cyber-espionage weapon, Gauss is a complex cyber-expionage toolkit, with its design emphasizing stealth and secrecy,” Alexander Gostev, Kaspersky’s chief security specialist, said in the statement. “However its purpose is different. Gauss targets multiple users in select countries to steal large amounts of data, with a specific focus on banking and financial information.’
Officials at one of the targeted institutions would only admit to Bloomberg that they were aware of the worm.
Kaspersky Lab’s blog post about the threat gives a timeline detailing Gauss’s life and the timing of its discovery, which Kaspersky writes “was made possible due to strong resemblances and correlations between Flame and Gauss.”
Could it be Gauss, like Flame, was made in the USA? Maybe we’ll find out if America’s cyber weapons gurus are still leaking like a watering can.