Nation-backed surveillance malware monitors Middle East bank accounts

Computerworld - A sophisticated cyber surveillance tool that monitors financial transactions with Middle Eastern banks was probably built by or under the auspices of a government, security researchers said today.

Early Thursday, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab revealed its findings about "Gauss," the name it's slapped on the malware it uncovered in June but that went dormant a month later when the command-and-control (C&C) servers shut down.

Gauss shares traits with other advanced malware, notably Flame -- thedigital espionage tool aimed at Iran that scouted out systems ripe for data thievery -- Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at Kaspersky, said in an interview today. Those commonalities prompted the security firm to conclude that Gauss, like Flame, Stuxnet and Duqu, was created by a nation-state or that the project was funded by one or more governments.

"It's very clear that [Gauss] was built on the same platform as Flame," said Schouwenberg . "All these cyber weapons are linked to one another, and Gauss is part of that as well."

Previously, security experts -- including those at Kaspersky, as well as others at Symantec -- have connected Stuxnet with Duqu, and Flame with Stuxnet. Ergo, Gauss is connected to Stuxnet, the malware that sabotaged Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program

Other experts have speculated that the U.S. and Israeli governments, specifically their intelligence agencies, were the sources of Stuxnet and Flame.

Two things about Gauss stand out, said Schouwenberg: The online banking component and a still-mysterious payload that's so heavily encrypted that Kaspersky has no idea yet what it is or what it does.

Gauss is the first government-backed or -built malware that uses a banking module. Among its other duties, the Trojan steals credentials for several Middle Eastern banks headquartered in Lebanon, including the Bank of Beirut, EBLF, BlomBank, ByblosBank, FransaBank and Credit Libanais. It also targets users of Citibank and PayPal.

Because the malware's C&C infrastructure was shuttered last month, before Kaspersky could probe the servers or run a tamed copy of the malware to watch it interact with them, it has been unable to root out exactly what Gauss did when it was operational.

But Schouwenberg said Kaspersky has some ideas.

"It appears [Gauss] was used as a surveillance tool," said Schouwenberg. "We currently believe it was used to monitor accounts and money flow. We don't think they were trying to actually take the money."

Tracking funding for terrorist groups has played a major role in counter-terrorism efforts, and the malware's focus on Lebanon, where Hezbollah is especially active, may point to connections to Iran, the target of both Stuxnet and Flame. Many experts believe Hezbollah often acts as a proxy for Iran in that country's sometimes-secret, often public, conflict with Israel.

Kaspersky has identified about 2,500 machines infected with Gauss -- those PCs are monitored by the security company -- with two-thirds of them located in Lebanon. Another 19% are in Israel.