U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French President 52
CowboyRobot writes with the (not unexpected) official U.S. denial of using the Flame malware to spy on France. From the article: "That allegation was leveled at the U.S. government by unnamed French officials, according to a Tuesday report in the weekly French newspaper L'Express. It reported that computers belonging to top advisers to then French president Nicolas Sarkozy had been hacked using the Flame cyberespionage malware, which was designed to be used in highly targeted attacks... Napolitano was also asked if it wasn't ironic that while the United States has been sounding alarms over the growing amount of malware that's targeting U.S. government system, it also commissioning the Stuxnet and Flame cyber-espionage malware used against Iran. Napolitano, however, pled official ignorance. 'These programs were never attributed in any way to the U.S. government.'"
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They didn't use Flame to spy on the president. They have other spyware for that.
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They didn't use Flame to spy on just the French president.
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The location of the computers targeted by Flame tells you a lot about the people behind it. When initial reports came out about Flame, it was revealed that it primarily targeted Iran (189 infections), with additional infections in Israel/Palestine (89), Sudan (32), Syria (30) and Lebanon (18). The focus on Iran suggests the U.S. and/or Israel as being behind Flame. However, the remainder of the list focuses on countries that pose a threat to Israel, as opposed to countries that would be of more interest t
Re:I find this denial very truthful... (Score:5, Interesting)
And in the spirit of "truthyness", they said they didn't spy on the French Government, but instead on the advisers to a candidate during an election which he eventually lost. Just a tiny bit different from spying on the President. Perhaps they were only spying on his political advisers in any case.
Actually, I think it was Francois Hollande spying on Sarco's election campaign (:-))
--dave
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But he was actually president at the time of the spying because he was the incumbent.
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This cannot be! Denials are useless! America is always at fault for everything that goes wrong everywhere in the entire world.
That is true, unless they can blame another country for something it didn't do!
U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French (Score:5, Funny)
U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On French President
So what did they use to spy on him then?
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le flamé
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Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
Re:U.S. Denies Using Flame Malware To Spy On Frenc (Score:4, Funny)
Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
With Cheese.
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Royal flaming cheese head?
Don't mine me. I'm monolingual, but I thought that almost made sense.
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Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
With Cheese.
Extra Bacon?
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Non! "Le Flamé Royale"!
With Cheese.
Extra Bacon?
Pigs are filthy animals.
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Whoosh.
It's a Pulp Fiction reference. In the film, there's a famous discussion where they talk about how the McDonald's burger known as the "Quarter Pounder" in America is called a "Royale with Cheese" over in France. Hence the "with Cheese" statement here after the word "Royale" was used.
Why would they want to spy on france? (Score:2)
To see how the bad the presidents love life is to make themselves feel better? Or if this was a few years ago perhaps they just wanted to hear Carli Bruni singing in the bath?
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French President Sarkozy criticized Israeli PM Netanyahu, and of course, we can't just let him get away with that.
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Aerospace, advanced space platforms, bridge building/telco/dams/nuclear/oil/mining contracts- France is just very good at building stuff at a fair rate or for its friends around the world and the USA sees that as its unique profit pool.
France knows the NSA loves to watch French trade deals and all French political leaders an
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Why is France running Windows at that level on the 'net'?
Change is always seen as annoying by users, and top level executive users have power to resist change, if they are stupid enough to not understand why they need it. I am not sure french military security experts would have been able to impose something to Sarkozy and its counselors
First rule of politics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Never believe anything until it's been officially denied. (source [wikipedia.org])
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That's hilarious they actually made a computer game out of that.
It almost seems to be a prequel to Brazil.
How sincere... (Score:4, Funny)
F: Hey, USA, did you eat my last cupcake? ...while my job is to, er, increase the protection of cupcakes using all the means available to me.
USA: The consumption of the last cupcake was never attributed in any way to me.
F: I see. But did you eat it?
USA: Beyond this point, your question presupposes a yes or no answer...
F: Well, yes, I want to know if you ate it...
USA:
F: Okaayy... you ate it, didn't you?
USA: Look, to do this, my cupcake procurement and protection budget has been increased 40% last year, and will increases another 75% next year. Everyone's cupcakes will be safer!
F: Wow, thanks! But I notice you didn't actually deny taking my cupcake.
USA: Sorry, I have to go now.
what... (Score:1)
Closed Source dangers (Score:3)
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Do you really want national intelligence agencies to be focusing their efforts on linux spyware?
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Do you really want national intelligence agencies to be focusing their efforts on linux spyware?
Of course. After all, the GPL would force that spyware to be Open Source, and then you wouldn't need that tedious reverse-engineering!
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Of course they deny it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Whenever you get caught doing something you deny it. Thats the first rule of doing shit youre not supposed to do. Hell if the government will deny when their own special forces gets caught or killed by the enemy why should they fess up to a computer virus when human life means so little to them?
Rule of life to live by...
Never write anything down.
No video.
No pictures.
Deny, deny, deny.
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Not Hollande. But the Petraeus was probably trying to enable Sarkozy's web cam hoping to get a peek at Carla Bruni walking around in her underwear.
Why not truth? (Score:2)
I wish they would just say something like "Of course we are spying on the French president. We spy on everyone, friend and foe alike. That's our job. And if you aren't spying on us then you should fire your incompetent intelligence staff and find better ones."
Not Amerika, say it ain't so??? (Score:2)
Sure, John Negroponte (recently noted at an Aspen Institute gathering on intelligence, along with fave biographer of Petraues, Paula Broadwell, who managed to do his biography while she was doing the general) and Frank Wisner, Jr. (still hasn't figured out the CIA murdered his dad????) put together that
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What about Israel? (Score:2)