BAD HARDWARE WEEK

If the U.S. government developed Flame as well, that would mean its team was actively involved in undermining the security of Windows, America's biggest software export.

Another scenario is that Flame is an Israeli product, and that Resource 207 was brought to the Stuxnet project by the Israeli military-intelligence researchers who joined their American counterparts in producing Stuxnet after the Stuxnet project had already begun. (American and Israeli sources have each claimed in the press that their nation originated Stuxnet.)

Rumors in the Israeli press have connected Flame to a brewing political scandal in Israel, which alleges that Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former head of the armed forces Gabi Ashkenazi spied on each other and even tried to undermine the other with forged memos.

"Our Israeli source tells us that the Shin Bet [Israeli domestic intelligence] installed Flame on the computer of Barak's chief of staff after Ashkenazi complained the former was spying on him," Britain's Guardian newspaper said on June 8.

However, that is not the end. “Is the U.S. releasing viruses so powerful that it needs to lose its control of the Internet?” “I don't think by itself the release of Flame rises to threshold. I’m dubious of is effectiveness, and suspicious of those claims.”