Vikram Thakur, senior manager at Symantec's security response team, told The Register on Tuesday that the reason his firm took so long to disclose the malware is down to a couple of factors.

Firstly, the Windows-targeting malware is so complex, Symantec wasn't sure exactly what it was dealing with, since the authors have been very good at concealing it and changing it. Secondly, it was just one of thousands of samples of malicious code the company discovers and processes every month.

"Even today, I'm very certain we don't have every possible angle of Regin uncovered and I think there are a number of components that we don’t know about yet," he said.
Symantec started studying Regin late last year after it detected a few cases of infections. The total number of compromised PCs is barely a hundred, we're told, so there was a small sample of builds to study. When checking back through its logs of scanned files, the firm found some Regin tools had been in operation since 2008.

It's likely other security firms stumbled across similarly puzzling infections, Thakur said. Kaspersky claims it found cases of Regin a decade ago and has been actively tracking it for three years, and F-Secure says it saw builds five or six years ago. It's assumed the pair decided to publish their in-depth research in response to Symantec going public.
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Closing words
"The possibilities for Regin are now twofold," Thakur concluded. "The first is that now people are aware of Regin it might make the authors abandon the code completely. Alternatively they could revamp the malware to the point where it's undetectable."

Why did it take antivirus giants YEARS to drill into super-scary Regin? Symantec responds... • The Register

The U.S. and Briton doing some spying. Who would of ever guessed.
Next thing we will learn that Russia and China are spying also.

Countries have been spying on countries for thousands of years.
Spying is not new; just the methods are new.

Yes they do it for our own good

ThrashZone said:

Yes they do it for our own good

That is a lot of BS. If they spy on the executives of the EU or the leaders of nations that are suppoed to be friends, then this is unacceptable. I wonder how Americans would feel if every European country would spy on the American President or members of congress.

Every country has a big brother there are no exception to this,
Really nothing to see in this our most transparent administration ever in history all anyone would need to do is simply ask

whs said:

I wonder how Americans would feel if every European country would spy on the American President or members of congress.

That reminds me of a great TED Talks video from F-Secure's Chief Research Officer where he at one point compares the US and Europe.

How the NSA betrayed the world's trust - time to act

z3r010 said:

whs said:

I wonder how Americans would feel if every European country would spy on the American President or members of congress.

Do you seriously think they don't?

Well at least not Germany - if I can believe the results of the parlementary investigation committee. The UK is a different matter - but they like to differ.

This happens quite allot lately