Bangalore: A recent analysis on ever-notorious Flame malware, has revealed that it may be one of the four portions of malware, from the same creator.

Flame malware became famous last May when it was targeted on Iran oil production. Later on after thorough analysis, the mystery was revealed that the virus shared sheer similarities with Stuxnet, which earlier was used to disrupt Iran’s Uranium refineries. Analysts believe that the virus was so sophisticated that it has been built possibly by the U.S. or Israel.

The latest research is done by a joint pact between Symantec, Kaspersky Lab, the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) IMPACT cybersecurity team, Germany's Computer Emergency Response Team for Bundesbehörden and its Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

According to the study, the codes of Flame virus dates far back to December 2006, making it older than initially expected. Kaspersky Lab clearly cites that, although the virus was found in the year 2010, the deployment was already done years back.

“We believe this was deliberately done to deceive hosting company sys-admins who might run unexpected checks," Kaspersky wrote.

Along with that Kaspersky also have found that Flame's command-and-control system handled and controlled three other viruses whose identities still unknown. Analysts states that either these viruses already have been deployed or they are still under development.

"Our previous statistics did not show a large number of infections in Sudan, so this must have been a dedicated campaign targeting systems in Iran and Sudan," Kaspersky wrote.