USA Charged with Installing Virus onto Computers of France’s Elysee Palace

A press article in one French journal named l'Express recently blamed USA of utilizing malicious software like the PC-virus Flame so as for hacking into Elysee Palace's PC network even as President Nicolas Sarkozy officially spends his concluding weeks in the France's presidential palace, published ibtimes.co.uk dated November 21, 2012.

Using one scam on Facebook, the hackers installed the virus program onto Government of France's Intranet. Thereafter, they selected some government employees who were browsing the social-networking website and acquired their trust as friends. Following so, they sent those employees web-links linking up with one mockup or fake Intranet site of the French govt. Here, the usernames and passwords, which the gullible workers entered, were recorded with the hackers.

The cyber-criminals then used the account credentials to compromise the associated systems on which they unleashed certain spyware software for contaminating several PCs. It was discovered that the malware's traits resembled those of 'Flame.' As per l'Express, Flame was the creation of an US-Israeli party for attacking the nuclear plant of Iran.

But, according to the Embassy of United States, they wholly disprove the allegations coming from unknown sources that were reported in l'Express saying that the US federation involved themselves in an online attack for harming the Govt. of France. Thehindu.com published this dated November 23, 2012.

Meanwhile according to F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen, Security Expert, who tweeted, it was quite hard for him to accept that USA was employing Flame for targeting authorities in France. He further wrote that there was little evidence inside the news story that the malware was indeed Flame. Ibtimes.co.uk published this.

Conclusively, history has long known France and USA to engage in two-way industrial espionage. Naturally the two nations vehemently safeguard their respective areas of industry. Also significantly, as forthcoming president of France is expected to belong to the socialist group, along with the continuous centralized position of France within EU, it's obvious that USA emphasizes on remaining well-informed. Besides, though it isn't true that friendly countries don't mutually spy, it's as well absolutely unfeasible to prove that the cyber-assault in discussion was from the alleged origin.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 12/3/2012