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Comment by bcrescimanno | Hacker News Reader

I think the point was more that the amount of money it would take would not necessarily come from a "wealthy nation-state." I'm not arguing over who actually did it; but I agree with the above that it's a pretty big leap to include that only.

There are a lot of organizations in the world, corporate, criminal, and otherwise, that can muster say $25 million (which, I admit is a number I just pulled out of my ass) to accomplish a monumental task. I'm just not sure that I'm ready to believe that the money amounts we're talking here are restricted only to the wealthiest of nation states. Is the claim that you would need literally billions of dollars to get the smart people and equipment?

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That was basically my thinking. The purpose of Flame seems to be clear intelligence gathering, so most likely it is a state actor that wanted it; I wonder however if it was indeed developed by a state or a private group on behalf of a state.

Plausible deniability is useful after all.

Absolutely. I have very little doubt that it was indeed a nation-state who developed it; but, my main issue is with the distinction of it being a "wealthy" one. Couldn't Flame, perhaps, have been developed by Iran and released on themselves as a means for drumming up anti-Israeli or anti-American sentiment?

I realize something like that is totally conjecture; but, I don't see it as any further conjecture than, "it must be the US and / or Israel"

[Edit] Since somehow this didn't come across in my post; throwing up conjecture at another possible source of Flame outside of US / Israel doesn't mean I believe any of these explanations--my point was merely that both ideas are pure conjecture with little (at least that I'm aware of) evidence to support the claim.

The US is not a nation-state.

Um, what is it then? Since the 20th Century most inhabitants of the US seem to think of themselves as Americans as opposed to Pennsylvanians or whatever. The US has a few things that look sort of like imperial possessions (e.g. Puerto Rico), but those are a pretty small part.

If Iran developed Flame you think they would chose to use it as a PR stunt over using it for intelligence gathering. From what I understand Iran is more interested in developing nukes than generating bad press for US/Israel.

Considering that the New York Times this week published a leak from within the administration admitting responsibility for Stuxnet and Duqu, both of which targeted Iran, do you honestly believe that Iran developing Flame as a false flag operation is equally credible?

No, I don't "honestly believe" that at all; I thought my post made it quite clear that is was pure conjecture. I don't see it as "outside the realm of possibility;" though, it is quite unlikely.

It depends on how one defines "wealthy." The IMF has Iran at 25th out of 182 wealthiest in the world, World Bank has them at 29 out of 190, and the CIA has them at 25 out of 191 (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... ). I think they're using "wealthy" to mean "wealthy enough for the government to fund non-trivial computer science research."

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