Flame Cyber Attack Overblown: Expert

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The discovery of sophisticated new malware, dubbed "Flame" has made headlines around the world in the last few days, again raising the frightening prospect of cyber warfare. At least one security expert, however, says that at this stage the Flame threat is overblown.

"I feel like there's a lot of hype about it at the moment," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus specialist Sophos, told TheStreet. "The numbers don't add up -- there's only a small number of computers that seem to be impacted."

The newly-discovered Flame malware has grabbed global attention.

Cluley adds that Flame has not even singed Sophos's 100 million customers.

"We have been looking at our systems, where customers' computers report back to us what activity they have seen -- none of them have seen this malicious software," he said. "Flame might suggest some naughtiness going on, but I don't think there's any new message for the typical computer user about how to protect themselves."

Nonetheless, Flame quickly gained global attention after its discovery by researchers from Kaspersky Lab, working in conjunction with the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union. In a statement released on Tuesday, Kaspersky Lab described Flame as "a highly sophisticated malicious program" that is being used as a "cyber weapon" against several countries.

The BBC reports that organizations within Iran, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt have been targeted by the attack. In a statement released on Monday, Iran's cyber emergency response team warned that Flame could be responsible for recent incidents of "mass data loss" within the country.