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Monday that "the complexity and functionality of the newly discovered malicious program exceed those of all other cyber menaces known to date."
• It said preliminary findings suggest the virus has been active since March 2010, but eluded detection because it of its "extreme complexity" and the fact that only selected computers are being targeted. Flame's primary purpose, it said, "appears to be cyber espionage, by stealing information from infected machines" and sending it to servers across the world.
• ___
Reclusive nations pull back their political curtains, but change? That's more complicated
• For decades, they have been two of the world's most reclusive nations.
• Myanmar, run by a cabal of generals, squelched any attempt at democratic change and kept the country's most popular figure under strict house arrest for years.
• North Korea, run by the same family as a Stalinist dictatorship since the 1940s, simply sealed itself off. Outsiders were rarely allowed to visit, tourists were long unknown and the only way ordinary people could escape the country's extreme poverty and political repression was to steal across the border into China.
• But in very different ways, the two nations have opened themselves up over the past year or so, allowing the world to peer behind the political curtains they had so laboriously erected.
• Both now have foreign journalists arriving in unprecedented numbers (though the visits are tightly restricted in North Korea). Both have had observers predicting momentous changes. Both governments have insisted -- repeatedly -- that they are working to improve the lives of their citizens.
• ___
AP Exclusive: Calif. 9/11 license plate fund, intended for scholarships, raided for deficits
• SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- After the 2001 terrorist attacks, California lawmakers sought a way to channel the patriotic fervor and use it to help victims' families and law enforcement. Their answer: specialty memorial license plates emblazoned with the words, "We Will Never Forget."
• Part of the money raised through the sale of the plates was to fund scholarships for the children of California residents who perished in the attacks, while the majority -- 85 percent -- was to help fund anti-terrorism efforts.
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