We do now know however that one compiler flag is all it takes to throw off professional, full-time reverse-engineers. That's got to be valuable to someone.

Well, to be fair, according to the article it was two compiler flags.

Either way, Team Kaspersky didn't exactly cover themselves in glory. Probably the 2nd most used compiler on the planet, in the most obvious language. God help them if someone really did confront them with an exotic language.

Wouldn't you expect an exploit to be written in a low level/system level language on the very platform(and associated tool-chain) it is targeting?

C is perfect. It's low level and compiles on every platform in the world.

I wonder why this "research" hasn't been shut down by various governments. Yet. Unless it leads to a red herring.

>I wonder why this "research" hasn't been shut down by various governments. Yet. Unless it leads to a red herring.

Because anyone who stepped in to stop it would be basically admitting involvement. Right now the perpetrators are likely exactly where they want to be. Speculated on as a possibility, but unconfirmed.

And unconfirmed they will likely remain.