Computer security experts say they have found a ‘groundbreaking cyber-security threat’ that appears to have been designed by a government and it has made its way into Irish computers.
Computer security experts Symantec, the people behind Norton Antivirus, have dubbed the newly uncovered threat ‘Regin’ and they say that the bug appears to have been created by a government with the intentions of cyber spying. Uh oh…
“Its capabilities and the level of resources behind Regin indicate that it is one of the main cyber-espionage tools used by a nation state,” Symantec said Sunday.
The company went on to say that Regin’s “development took months, if not years, to complete.”
According to the BBC, “experts say computers in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Ireland have been hit most”.
Symantec says that Regin has been infecting computers for six years and once it has made its way onto a computer it can capture screenshots, steal passwords and recover previously deleted files.
It’s still unclear (or at least unreported) as to who created the virus, for what reason and why exactly they’re using it against Irish computers…
Now, we wouldn’t go throwing our laptops out the window just yet as Vikram Thakur from Symantec said: “We don’t believe [Regin] is being used… for mass surveillance”.
So unless you’ve been up to some serious shady activity recently, we’d say your laptop is probably safe – probably being the key word.
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