Scale of cyber-attacks on Iran further unveiled with Flame Stuxnet link The Kaspersky findings traced a "missing link" between the "Stuxnet" virus, which was first identified in 2009, and "Flame" which was discovered on hundreds of computers in Iran last month, but also traces its origins back to 2008. Both are now said to contain a piece of source code, known as "Resource 207" that is designed to enable the viruses spread via USB pen drives. Kaspersky said worms are believed to have diverged, with 'Stuxnet" used for "sabotage" and 'Flame" as a "general-purpose espionage tool." Kapersky said the discovery of the link contradicts those who were sceptical that "Flame" was a cyber-weapon. Only last week the UN's telecommunications head, Dr Hamadoun Toure, said he did not believe the US was behind Flame describing US involvement in Stuxnet as "speculation." Vitaly Kamluk, chief malware expert at Kaspersky, said he also had initially not been confident that "Stuxnet" and "Flame" had shared origins, but that technical analysis showed he had been mistaken. "It puts flame on a different level of threat and it makes it more dangerous because you understand that there are very high-profile professionals behind it," he added. This is no joke. Roel Schouwenberg, senior anti-virus researcher at Kaspersky, said that understanding how "Flame" worked was of "huge importance" to the future of computer security, and pointed to the need to produce some ground rules on a new dimension in warfare. The risk of attack, he added, was no longer theoretical as they were already happening. "The best example of that is that I had somebody from US critical infrastructure come to me and say "we found Stuxnet within our network,"" Mr Schouwenberg added, "and if we hadn't done all these external safety checks then Stuxnet could have caused a power outage in the United States. That shows already the perfect example of how things could have gone very wrong and with that in mind, this is a conversation that needs to be had, and I don't think there is any hype whatsoever about this, this is an extremely important issue.