Guys behind Gauss and Flame are the same

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Guys behind Gauss and Flame are the same
Botnet	Gauss, Flame
Malware
Botnet/malware group
Exploit kits
Services
Feature
Distribution vector
Target
Origin
Campaign
Operation/Working group
Vulnerability
CCProtocol	HTTP
Date	2012 / 2012-08-23
Editor/Conference	FireEye
Link	http://blog.fireeye.com/research/2012/08/guys-behind-gauss-and-flame-are-the-same.html (Archive copy)
Author	Ali Islam
Type

Abstract

“ The Gauss malware, which was in the media recently for its stealth and notorious payload, is now back from its dormant state with a surprise. We recently discovered a very interesting shift in the Gauss malware CnC communication. Gauss bot masters have directed their zombies to connect to the Flame/SkyWiper CnC to take commands.

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UPDATE: In our post earlier today, we concluded that there was some sort of relationship between the Gauss and Flame malware actors based on observing CnC communication going to the Flame CnC IP address. At the same time, the CnC domains of Gauss were sink-holed to the same CnC IP. There was no indication or response in the communication originating from the CnC server to indicate that it may have been owned by another member of the security research community. In light of new information shared by the security community, we now know that our original conclusions were incorrect and we cannot associate these two malware families based solely upon these common CnC coordinates.

We apologize for any confusion that has resulted from our earlier assumptions. Unfortunately, the lack of a common information exchange about such activities can result in misleading conclusions.

Bibtex

 @misc{2012BFR1119,
   editor = {FireEye},
   author = {Ali Islam},
   title = {Guys behind Gauss and Flame are the same},
   date = {23},
   month = Aug,
   year = {2012},
   howpublished = {\url{http://blog.fireeye.com/research/2012/08/guys-behind-gauss-and-flame-are-the-same.html}},
 }