Friends of Stuxnet

Security research firm, Kaspersky Lab, released a report yesterday asserting that the Stuxnet virus, which infected Iranian nuclear facilities and is widely believed to have been hatched by the U.S. and Israel, has been kicking around since 2007. According to researchers at Kaspersky, the platform that Stuxnet is built on has been found in four other pieces of malicious code. One such piece of code is Duqu, which we’ve been talking about, is a kind of scout that snoops around networks looking for security flaws to exploit. Reuters spoke to Kaspersky’s director of research and analysis, Costin Raiu, and reports,

The platform is comprised of a group of compatible software modules designed to fit together, each with different functions. Its developers can build new cyber weapons by simply adding and removing modules.

“It’s like a Lego set. You can assemble the components into anything: a robot or a house or a tank,” [Raiu] said.

Kaspersky named the platform “Tilded” because many of the files in Duqu and Stuxnet have names beginning with the tilde symbol “~” and the letter “d.”

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present The Tilded Age.