U.S. and Israel Designed Flame Virus to Target Iran [REPORT]

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Flame, which is a highly sophisticated piece of malware that turns infected computers into listening machines, was designed to map out Iran's nuclear systems and spy on Iranian officials, according to "Western officials with knowledge of the effort," reports the Washington Post.

The joint effort, codenamed "Olympic Games" (which also reportedly bred the Stuxnet virus) involved the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and elements of Israel's military.

Flame was designed to disguise itself as a commonplace Windows software update. Once infected, computers became sophisticated spying devices, sending data from hard drives, computer microphones, webcams and nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones back to the malware's creator or creators.

Flame was first detected by Kaspersky Lab, a Russian-based computer security firm, in May. Kaspersky's analysts said it could have been several years old, and experts said its complexity indicated it could have only been produced by a government or military.

Some observers believed that either the U.S. or Israel were involved in Flame's creation from an early point -- speculation that increased after a June New York Times report that the two countries were behind Stuxnet, which caused physical damage to an Iranian nuclear facility. Israel denied being involved with Flame earlier this month.