Those who commissioned the malware Flame also created the deadly Stuxnet, say Kaspersky Labs, who have discovered an identical piece of code in both worms. What appeared to be two unrelated programs are probably part of the same cyberwar campaign.

"The new findings that reveal how the teams shared the source code of at least one module in the early stages of development prove that the groups co-operated at least once," wrote Aleksandr Gostev, chief security expert for Russian security company Kaspersky Labs.

Flame, which was discovered only last month, despite operating for several years, is a cyber-espionage program. After infiltrating computer systems through hundreds of possible vulnerabilities, it records all of the user’s information, from printed documents to voices recorded on the microphone.