Experts: miniFlame Is Similar to PlugX and PoisonIvy, Not a Threat to Regular Users

A few days ago, Kaspersky experts published the results of an analysis on SPE, also known as miniFlame, one of the brothers of the now-infamous Flame malware. Trend Micro researchers have also studied the threat and they claim that it’s somewhat similar to some of the well-known Remote Administration Trojans (RATs).

miniFlame, detected by Trend Micro as BKDR_FLAMER.SMA, is not very different from previously seen malicious tools such as the PlugX RAT and its predecessor PoisonIvy.

According to experts, miniFlame is designed to act just like any other backdoor. Its main capabilities include downloading and uploading files, invoking sleep commands and creating processes.

The good news, for regular users at least, is that the malware appears to be utilized only in highly specific attacks, so it shouldn’t present any serious security concerns to the average internaut.

Nevertheless, security firms have already made sure that their products will identify and neutralize the threat in case it somehow lands on their customers’ computers.