But Israel launched the attack on its own without first consulting the Americans, the Post said.
It was that attack on Iran’s oil industry that brought the worm to the attention of the Iranian government for the first time. Iran contacted malware specialists leading to the public revelation of Flame earlier this month by the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab.
The Post said despite collaborating on development of Flame, Israel and the United States have not always consulted one another before putting Flame into use.
The Post said, “Some US intelligence officials were dismayed that Israel’s unilateral incursion led to the discovery” of Flame and allowed Iran to design countermeasures.
Flame is believed to have been around—undiscovered—for at least five years, if not longer. The Kaspersky Lab has concluded that Flame predates the Stuxnet worm that was exposed two years ago. One researcher at Kaspersky said Flame was the platform to which Stuxnet was later attached.
That age automatically raised questions about just how much Flame has done over the years to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. Flame was designed primarily as spyware to poke around inside Iranian computers and report back on what was going on. It isn’t known if the April attack launched by Israel was the first time Flame was used aggressively rather than passively.
As for Stuxnet, it officially dies at one minute passed midnight Sunday. The Christian Science Monitor said the Stuxnet contains a few lines of code telling it to shut down for good at the start of July 1, 2012.