A new form of malware which eats whole networks has been developing in the wild and appears to have been developed as part of a Russian spy plot against the United States. The Uroburos malware, named after a mythical snake which eats its own tail, has been around since 2011 but only just been spotted.

German security firm G Data discovered it only recently and have dubbed it as a a rootkit. The malware burrows deep into Windows operating systems, steals files and transmits them back to Russia. It appears to be built to target high-security installations and requires an Internet connection to transmit data, but not to spread. As long as computers are connected via a network , Uroburos can replicate itself and funnel files back to an Internet-connected system for transmission.

Most users do need not worry about Uroburos. Its designers probably want it to target government and corporate installations rather than individual users. But it is jolly difficult to detect and that makes it worrying. G Data thinks it is similar to another one called Agent.BTZ that made the rounds against the U.S. government in 2008. It has a Russian-language piece of Uroburos code, these similarities suggest that the creators of the malware are Russian.