“Beirut is a hot spot for the clandestine movement of money by states,” said a former U.S. Several analysts said they were not surprised to hear that most of the Gauss infections were discovered in Lebanon. Why not apply it to this investigation into Lebanese banks and whether or not they are involved in money laundering for Hezbollah?” he said. He said Gauss was likely built by adapting technology deployed in Flame.
government has long monitored Lebanese banks for clues about the activities of militant groups and drug cartels. Jeffrey Carr, an expert on cyber warfare who runs a small security firm known as Taia Global, said the U.S. Those discussions were stirred up by the discovery of Flame in May by Kaspersky and others. Kaspersky’s findings are likely to fuel a growing international debate over the development and use of cyber weapons and espionage tools. “All these attack toolkits represent the high end of nation-state-sponsored cyber-espionage and cyber war operations.” “After looking at Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame, we can say with a high degree of certainty that Gauss comes from the same ‘factory’ or ‘factories,’” Kaspersky on its website. Department of Defense declined to comment. Kaspersky Lab would not speculate on who was behind Gauss, but said the virus was connected to Stuxnet and two other related cyber espionage tools, Flame and Duqu. A Citibank spokeswoman declined to comment. PayPal spokesman Anuj Nayar said the company was investigating the matter but was not aware of any increase in “rogue activity” as a result of Gauss. Officials with the three Lebanese banks said they were unaware of the virus. Targets included Lebanon’s BlomBank, ByblosBank and Credit Libanais, as well as Citigroup Inc’s Citibank and eBay’s PayPal online payment system.
The Moscow-based firm said it found Gauss had infected more than 2,500 personal computers, the bulk of them in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories. REUTERS/Benjamin Beavan/Filesĭubbed Gauss, the virus may also be capable of attacking critical infrastructure and was very likely built in the same laboratories as Stuxnet, the computer worm widely believed to have been used by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday. Kaspersky Lab CEO and Co-founder Eugene Kaspersky speaks during the Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit in London in this June 11, 2012, file photo.
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