Today, Kaspersky announced that it had discovered yet another nation-state sponsored piece of malware that's closely related to Flame (aka Flamer, SkyWiper) called Gauss which targets Lebanese banks:
On December 13, 2011, the New York Times published an article on the Obama Administration's claim that Lebanese banks were engaging in money laundering services for Hezbollah. The investigation led to the take down of the Lebanese Canadian Bank and it was at least six years old according to the Times article.
On June 27, 2012, the U.S. Treasury Dept designated four individuals under the Kingpin act for laundering money through Lebanese banks.
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Gauss is a project developed in 2011-2012 along the same lines as the Flame project. The malware has been actively distributed in the Middle East for at least the past 10 months. The largest number of Gauss infections has been recorded in Lebanon, in contrast to Flame, which spread primarily in Iran.
Functionally, Gauss is designed to collect as much information about infected systems as possible, as well as to steal credentials for various banking systems and social network, email and IM accounts. The Gauss code includes commands to intercept data required to work with several Lebanese banks – for instance, Bank of Beirut, Byblos Bank, and Fransabank.
On December 13, 2011, the New York Times published an article on the Obama Administration's claim that Lebanese banks were engaging in money laundering services for Hezbollah. The investigation led to the take down of the Lebanese Canadian Bank and it was at least six years old according to the Times article.
On June 27, 2012, the U.S. Treasury Dept designated four individuals under the Kingpin act for laundering money through Lebanese banks.
There's no question that Lebanon's banking system has been a target of the U.S. government for several years and apparently for good reason. I can easily imagine someone in the IC suggesting that an espionage platform (Flame) which has worked well for many years against Iran be tweaked to help conduct intelligence on alleged money laundering by drug cartels and terrorists via Lebanon's banks.
Mr. Makram Sadr, the Secretary General of Lebanon's Banks, said on July 4, 2012 that the U.S. Treasury Dept has failed to produce any evidence that Lebanese banks are involved in such activities.
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