Flame
Flame (canonical Kaspersky naming derived from main module FROG.DefaultAttacks.A-InstallFlame + MAHER Iranian CERT naming "Flamer" + CrySyS Lab naming "sKyWIper" / "Skywiper" + common alternative naming "Da Flame" per joint canonical May 28, 2012 disclosure simultaneously announced by MAHER Center Iranian National CERT + Kaspersky Lab + CrySyS Lab of Budapest University of Technology and Economics) is a massive ~20MB modular cyber-espionage platform, operationally one of the most complex malware platforms ever found per CrySyS Lab canonical 2012 assessment ("certainly the most sophisticated malware we encountered during our practice.
arguably, it is the most complex malware ever found".
per Kaspersky "twenty times more complicated than Stuxnet") + the first publicly-known cryptographic-attack-as-malware-spread mechanism via signature novel MD5 chosen-prefix collision attack enabling forged Microsoft Update digital certificate masquerading (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica CWI cryptanalyst Marc Stevens canonical analysis: "Flame uses a completely new variant of a 'chosen prefix collision attack' to impersonate a legitimate security update from Microsoft")
speculatively attributed to US-Israel joint offensive cyber operation cluster cell coherence with Stuxnet Olympic Games operation per Kaspersky shared-development-team attribution hypothesis + adjacent timing/target overlap with Stuxnet (Flame active in the wild since at least February 2010 per Kaspersky, with CrySyS-observed main component filename as early as December 2007)
active 2007-2012+ with operational discovery context of UN International Telecommunication Union ITU commissioning Kaspersky to investigate "Wiper" malware affecting Iranian Oil Ministry computers that caused Iranian officials to disconnect oil terminals from internet April 2012, Kaspersky discovered Flame as separate infection while investigating Wiper.
comprehensive multi-modal surveillance capability (audio recording via microphone + screen capture screenshots + keyboard activity keylogger + network traffic capture + Skype conversation recording + signature Bluetooth beacon contact harvesting from nearby Bluetooth-enabled devices) + Lua embedded scripting + SQLite embedded database within modular platform architecture.
~600 modules / target-organization-specific deployment.
USB stick + LAN + signature Windows Update MitM via forged Microsoft digital certificate propagation.
targets Iran (Oil Ministry primary) + Israel + Sudan + Syria + Lebanon + Saudi Arabia + Egypt + other Middle Eastern countries.
Microsoft response included Microsoft Security Response Center revoking fraudulent intermediate Certificate Authorities + issuing KB2718704 security advisory + updating Terminal Server licensing systems configuration that had enabled the certificate chain abuse (operationally significant Microsoft acknowledgment that Flame's certificate chain abuse exploited configuration error in Terminal Server licensing infrastructure)
operators issued suicide self- destruct command to infected systems shortly after May 28, 2012 disclosure attempting to defeat forensic recovery.
signature false creation date metadata 1994 per CrySyS.
Kaspersky Lessons Learned three-year retrospective May 27, 2015 documented initial industry skepticism ("Flame is lame... A 20 megabytes malware can be l33t? Impossible!") which "died when the Microsoft Windows Updates attack and MD5 collision was found and patched".
fills the 2nd Olympic Games / US- Israel joint cyber-operations cell in the curated corpus following Stuxnet (1st) and operationally precedes Duqu (3rd), operationally significant cluster-cell coherence with Stuxnet + Duqu siblings per Kaspersky shared-development-team attribution hypothesis.
canonical "most complex malware ever found" industry reference point + first publicly-known novel- cryptographic-attack-as-malware-spread mechanism cited in essentially all subsequent state-actor-tier modular cyber-espionage platform industry analyses through 2012-2026 period.