Iran claims to stop Dino Malware attack

Iran confirms that spy malware called Dino is targeting sensitive centers inside the country since one and half years ago.

Masoud Biglarian, head of the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERTCC), said that after malware was discovered the CERTCC which is subset of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sent a secret report to the countrys officials about the issue.

According to Irans Mehr news agency Biglarian said: «We took appropriate measures to prevent damage to the strategic centers of the country by Dino».

He also said that Dino is a type of Spyware such as Stuxnet that is designed for specific purposes and launches targeted attacks.

He rejected claims that the malware infected some sensitive centers inside the country.

Last week some western media outlets reported that Dino malware which searches for specific data and steals it has infected some organizations inside Iran.

Security firm ESET researchers in Bratislava, Slovakia identified the sophisticated Dino Trojan that attacked Iranian and Syrian targets in 2013 and it is rumor that the group is a secret part of the French Intelligence service.

Dino was supposedly created by the so-called Animal Farm Group which also created other Trojans like Bunny, Casper and Babar. Casper malwares claim to fame is that it was involved in a large scale attack on computer systems in Syria last autumn.

ESET claims that Dinos main goal seems to be the exfiltration of files from its targets.

Large scale cyber attacks on Iranian facilities started in 2010 after the US and Israel reportedly tried to disrupt the operation of Irans nuclear facilities through a worm that later became known as Stuxnet.

US intelligence officials revealed in June 2013 that the Stuxnet malware was not only designed to disrupt the Irans nuclear program but also was part of a wider campaign directed from Israel that included assassination of the countrys nuclear scientists.

Stuxnet is the first discovered worm that spies on industrial systems and reprograms them. It is written specifically to attack SCADA systems that are used to control and monitor industrial processes.

In September 2013 the Islamic Republic of Iran said that the computer worm Stuxnet infected 30 000 IP addresses in Iran but it denied reports that the cyber worm had damaged computer systems at the countrys nuclear power plants.

Duqu 2.0: ‘Almost Invisible’ Cyber Espionage Tool Targeted Russian Co., Linked to Iran Nuclear Talks

 

A Russian cyber security company says that it has discovered a highly-technical, “almost invisible” cyber espionage tool that targeted the company’s own servers and other systems around the world, including some linked to the controversial Iranian nuclear negotiations.

Kaspersky Labs which is based in Moscow announced that the discovery of the worm, called Duqu 2.0, which the company said it found this spring after the worm had penetrated through its system for “months.”

Kaspersky claims that after discovering the worm, started its investigation to find out other victims of the attack and found that some of the “infections are linked to the P5+1 events and venues related to negotiations with Iran about a nuclear deal.”

The Wall Street Journal was the first news agency to publish the news about Duqu 2.0. According to the Wall Street, computers at three luxury European hotels where negotiations had been held were among the worm’s victims.

Eugene Kaspersky said that the company cannot say definitely who is behind the attack, but he believes that due to its sophistication and technical links to previous next-generation computer worms, the attack is most possibly been carried out by a government.

Kaspersky said that the name of the Duqu 2.0 was chosen for this worm because it appeared to be an upgraded version of the Duqu worm which was another highly-sophisticated espionage tool discovered in 2011.

Kaspersky said, We can’t prove attribution because they’re going through proxy servers. “There are technical attributions we can read from the code. This attack is a relative, it’s a new generation of the Duqu attack, most probably made by the same people, or they shared the source code with others.”

Symantec which is a large cyber security company in America agreed that Duqu 2.0 is a evolution of the original threat that was created by the same group of attackers.

Symantec also reported Duqu 2.0 appears to have targeted European and North African telecom operators and a South East Asian electronic equipment manufacturer. Symantec had reported in 2012 that the Duqu threat had not been eliminated and that a new version of the worm had been discovered then.

Duqu and Duqu 2.0 is closely linked to Stuxnet, which is a revolutionary cyber-weapon that was believed to have physically damaged an Iranian nuclear facility and that was suspected to be a result of the joint US-Israeli top secret operation’s. 

 

When the original Duqu was discovered in 2011, Symantec reported that it “shares large number of codes with Stuxnet” and the same suspicions were raise about whether the attackers were the same or if source code had been shared.

Wall Street Journal in its report today said that Duqu 2.0 was “commonly believed to be used by Israeli spies.”

But according to Kaspersky Labs, Duqu 2.0 code also included a number of “false flag” clues to hide/mislead who was behind it. One was a mention in the code of a nickname for a Chinese military officer who was one of five indicted by the U.S. in an extraordinary move by the Department of Justice against Chinese cyber espionage. Another report mentioned a prolific Romanian hacker.

Kaspersky claims that such false flags are relatively easy to spot, especially when the attacker is very careful not to make any other mistakes,”