Bank-Snooping Probably Backed by a Government

Experts say surveillance tool monitoring transactions in the Middle East looks like more cyber-warfare

A sophisticated cyber surveillance tool that monitors financial transactions with Middle Eastern banks was probably built by or under the auspices of a government, security researchers said today.

Early Thursday, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab revealed its findings about "Gauss," the name it's slapped on the malware it uncovered in June but that went dormant a month later when the command-and-control (C&C) servers shut down.