Use your own 'Flame' spyware for investigations

06.08.2012
Logging onto your computer, you are greeted with a screen full of statistics in easy-to-read bar and pie graphs. One graph in particular quickly catches your attention. Out of hundreds of users, one computer is being flagged for sending large amounts of data to a server in Iran.

With a double click of your mouse, you are now watching the user attach an external drive to his system and log into a to transfer encrypted confidential files to a foreign server -- something your own corporate firewall would have missed. With a few more clicks of the mouse you log into his live machine and forensically capture the documents for your review.

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With the solid evidence of your suspect leaking classified files to an unknown person, you plant a digital tracking device within his own documents to follow them to their final destination. As a final confirmation, the suspect's work cell phone is tapped and GPS coordinates in combination with SMS text messages prove his guilt.

Sounds like the new ", but actually it's a combination of programs that have been on the market for years and can help your .

Although the media have been reporting the recently discovered and formally ousted spy tool, and its intel-collecting brother, Flame, as powerful and miraculous tools, hackers and others in the industry aren't impressed. Flame and its multiple payloads have been around for at least a decade in various combinations of malware and software-for-sale.