Duqu / Duqu 2.0
Duqu / Duqu 2.0 (canonical Symantec / CrySyS Duqu naming after Duqu's RPC component creating files prefixed with ~DQ per CrySyS Lab September 1, 2011 canonical discovery.
Duqu 2.0 successor variant per Kaspersky June 10, 2015 self-targeting canonical disclosure.
CrySyS Lab Duqu 2.0 alternative naming "the resurrection of Duqu".
cluster-cell-significant Tilded platform shared codebase with Stuxnet per Kaspersky December 2011 canonical attribution, "platform, which has been dubbed 'Tilded' because of the tendency of its creators to use files that start with the tilde symbol (~), was used for the creation of Stuxnet and Duqu, and also other malicious programs") is a cyber-espionage malware cluster operationally adjacent to Stuxnet Olympic Games operation, operationally significant as the canonical Stuxnet shared-codebase sibling cluster + the first publicly-known major cyber-attack against a cybersecurity research vendor (Duqu 2.0 Kaspersky Lab self-targeting June 2015).
speculatively attributed to US-Israel joint offensive cyber operation (cluster cell coherence with Stuxnet Olympic Games operation) per Kaspersky Tilded platform shared- codebase attribution + Symantec Stuxnet-Duqu code overlap analysis (three points of interest: installer exploits zero-day Windows kernel vulnerabilities; components signed with stolen digital keys.
Duqu and Stuxnet both highly targeted and related to nuclear program of Iran), with Duqu 2.0 variant operationally attributed to Israeli Unit 8200 specifically per NYT June 2015 ("believed to be the work of Unit 8200, an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces", most specific public attribution of any Olympic Games cluster)
Duqu original operationally conducting cyber-espionage / industrial-control-system-design-information-gathering precursor to Stuxnet operational deployment (operationally a reconnaissance / pre-operational stage of broader Olympic Games campaign)
signature CVE-2011-3402 TrueType font parsing kernel zero-day initial access vector via malicious Microsoft Word document delivery.
signature stolen Taiwanese code signing certificates (C-Media Electronics + Foxconn, operationally similar to but distinct from Stuxnet's Realtek + JMicron stolen Taiwanese certificates, revoked October 14, 2011)
signature JPEG image-file C2 traffic concealment (encrypted data appended to harmless image files, steganography-adjacent)
Duqu 2.0 successor variant operationally targeting Kaspersky Lab itself (signature first publicly- known major cyber-attack against cybersecurity research vendor, Kaspersky Lab networks compromised for months without knowledge per Eugene Kaspersky Forbes June 2015 acknowledgment "most probably carried out by a government-backed group".
Symantec Gavin O'Gorman commentary "Attacking a security company, and what clearly is a nation-state attacker going after a private security company that is meant to be protecting customers and so on - is quite galling") + P5+1 Iran nuclear deal negotiations venues in hotels of Austria + Switzerland (sites of international negotiations with Iran over nuclear program and economic sanctions) + Western organizations operating in Asia and Middle East + IT security firms.
Duqu 2.0 signature multi-zero-day operational chain (CVE-2015- 2360 kernel + CVE-2014-4148 TrueType font + CVE-2014- 6324 Kerberos privilege escalation) + signature in-memory-only persistence tradecraft (no on-disk persistence, operationally designed to defeat forensic recovery via reboot, with traffic concealment via JPEG + GIF image-file appended encrypted data + multiple user agent strings HTTP C2 obfuscation per Infosec Institute)
signature trusted-process injection via antivirus product detection (Duqu maintains list of known AV products for services.exe + lsass.exe trusted-process injection target selection per Symantec, with 0xb3 0x1f XOR encrypted strings pattern)
fills the 3rd Olympic Games / US-Israel joint cyber-operations cell in the curated corpus following Stuxnet (1st) + Flame (2nd), operationally completing the canonical Olympic Games / US-Israel joint cyber-operations cluster cell with Stuxnet (cyber-sabotage) + Flame (cyber-espionage massive modular platform) + Duqu/Duqu 2.0 (cyber-espionage Stuxnet-sibling reconnaissance + diplomatic venue signals intelligence + cybersecurity research vendor self-targeting) capability cell coherence.
continued industry reference status as canonical Stuxnet shared- codebase Tilded platform sibling cluster + first publicly-known major cyber-attack against cybersecurity research vendor cited in essentially all subsequent Olympic Games + state-actor-tier cyber-espionage platform industry analyses through 2011-2026 period.