Sophisticated 'Flame' Computer Virus Shares Programming Roots with Angry Birds
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, or until someone uses a the same programming language behind one of the most popular mobile games of all time to construct one of the largest cyberweapons the world has ever seen. The folks at Fox News spoke with a number of cyber security experts who said that the sophisticated 'Flame' malware currently wreaking havoc in the Middle East was written in the LUA computer language, which happens to be the same language Rovio used to build Angry Birds. Small world, eh?
Roel Schouwenberg, a senior security researcher with Kaspersky Labs, told Fox News that Flame is twenty times larger than previous cyberbombs, and immensely more powerful. So large, in fact, that it contains 250,000 lines of code and is like having a virtual army at your disposal. It's both fascinating and frightening that something like that could be built using gamer code.
What does Angry Birds and the one of the world's most volatile cyberweapons have in common? Both were built using the LUA programming language.
Once a system is infected, the Flame virus can fire up webcams, microphones, and tap into Bluetooth connections to infiltrate contacts, record conversations, and perform other underhanded tasks, Fox News says. It's unknown what person or organization is responsible for igniting Flame, but it probably comes from the same source as the Stuxnet virus, which was used to burrow into Iran's nuclear power plant.
Roel Schouwenberg, a senior security researcher with Kaspersky Labs, told Fox News that Flame is twenty times larger than previous cyberbombs, and immensely more powerful. So large, in fact, that it contains 250,000 lines of code and is like having a virtual army at your disposal. It's both fascinating and frightening that something like that could be built using gamer code.
What does Angry Birds and the one of the world's most volatile cyberweapons have in common? Both were built using the LUA programming language.
Once a system is infected, the Flame virus can fire up webcams, microphones, and tap into Bluetooth connections to infiltrate contacts, record conversations, and perform other underhanded tasks, Fox News says. It's unknown what person or organization is responsible for igniting Flame, but it probably comes from the same source as the Stuxnet virus, which was used to burrow into Iran's nuclear power plant.
