The antivirus company Kaspersky Lab announced today that it has detected a virus in the Middle East capable of spying on financial transactions, emails and social networks, similar to others used against Iran.
The virus "Gauss" which so far has infected computers in the Middle East mostly "is designed to monitor online banking accounts," to steal user information, visit history or passwords for access to payment systems or banking.
"Gauss is a complex tool, supported by nations for cyber spying, designed to steal sensitive information," says the company Kapersky antivirus and computer security in a statement.
According to Kaspersky, the virus was found in June while investigating another called "Flame", to which it very similar, and was designed to infect, among others, the teams from the Ministry of Petroleum of Iran.
Likewise, the new virus has similar structure to Stuxnet, another set of algorithms designed to attack Iranian nuclear facilities and allegedly used U.S. and Israel to boycott Iranian center for uranium enrichment.
According to Kaspersky, Gauss was developed between 2011 and this year and is dispersed in the Middle East team, especially in Lebanon, where about 1,660 computers are counted, and Israel in second place with 483 computers.
Although the security company has identified about 2,500 affected computers since May, estimated that "Gauss" was able to reach tens of thousands of computers.
Kapersky remember that these numbers remain lower than in cases of attack and Flame Stuxnet and Duqu, another virus with similar characteristics.
