According to the Iranian Computer Emergency Response Team (MAHER), the new piece of malware is called Flamer and might be responsible for recent data loss incidents in Iran. There are also reasons to believe that the malware is related to the Stuxnet and Duqu cyberespionage threats, the organization on Monday.

Malware researchers from antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab have also and found that while it is similar to Stuxnet and Duqu in terms of the geographic propagation and targeting, it has different features and it is, in many ways, more complex than both of those threats.

Flame, as the Kaspersky researchers call it, is a very large attack toolkit with many individual modules. It can perform a variety of malicious actions, most of which are related to data theft and cyberespionage.

Among other things, it can use a computer's microphone to record conversations, take screenshots of particular applications when in use, record keystrokes, sniff network traffic and communicate with nearby Bluetooth devices.

One of the toolkit's first versions was likely created in 2010 and its functionality was later extended by leveraging its modular architecture, said Vitaly Kamluk, chief malware expert at Kaspersky Lab.