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Comment by joshuahedlund | Hacker News Reader

> Flame targeted countries such as Iran and Israel and sought to steal large amounts of sensitive data.

I had heard that Flame targeted Iran, which was one of the reasons people suspected US and/or Israel. This says Israel was targeted. Am I misinterpreting something here? If other evidence supposedly points to a nation-state, what nation-state dislikes both Iran and Israel? Something's not adding up.

Edit: Thanks. "Spy on friends" or "Spy on yourself to deflect attention" seem as viable as any other theories out there, if not more.

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Another article on this (I don't have the link) indicated that the operators were carefully picking their targets and uninstalling it from uninteresting systems. If you have a virus like this, you can target people in your own country and help deflect suspicion at the same time.

> what nation-state dislikes both Iran and Israel?

Saudi Arabia

"Liking" a nation does not preclude other nations from spying on them. I'm sure the US and Israel spy on each other.

I'm sure the US spies on pretty much everyone, friend or foe... and it's probably the same the other way round too!

Sure. It's also a great way to get around domestic wiretapping laws. Assuming you can cooperate well enough with a foreign power, you can have a "I'll show you yours if you show me mine." sort of situation.

The US has some very close allies for sharing intel, and it'd be a massive incident if it got out that such allied countries were spying on each other. It happens to some degree, but if stuff gets out, the White House & State can make heads roll, so you'd only see pretty routine spycraft occur between allies (counter-intel, rumor mill, feelers).

The Pakistan/US relationship is a fascinating example of this.

The trick is not to get caught... and if you do get caught, then blame it in on the Chinese/Russians/flavour-of-the-month :D

In all seriousness, the spying may not be as hardcore or blatant(!) as say US/China or US/Russia but they are not looking for the same kind of intel between US/UK. I wuold be very very surprised if there was not some intel gathering at some level.

Another thing to note is how fragile and obviously forced the tentative friendship between the US and Israel is.

Iran has sectarian differences with most of its neighbours: its Supreme Leader is a Shia cleric, whereas most countries in the Middle East are majority Sunni. So it isn't exactly surrounded by friends.

There is a rather large difference between saying who was targeted and saying where the infections were found.

Actually, other Middle Eastern nations are nearly as worried about a nuclear-armed Iran as Israel is. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/23/nuclear-iran-un-...

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