Gauss was discovered during the "Flame" investigation, which itself has connections to Stuxnet — which in turn was part of a U.S. espionage project code named "Olympic Games".
Interesting.
Here are some additional things of interest regarding Gauss.
According to the analysis, Gauss targets several Lebanese banks and monitors transactions (such as a banking trojan would do).
That's quite something when considered in context with this Wall Street Journal story from April:
Here's another notable detail: Gauss will not install itself if antivirus software is present.
Finally, given how the Olympic Games story has evolved, it makes "paranoid" minded folks such as us read this August 6th story from the Wall Street Journal about Standard Chartered bank allegedly laundering $250 billion worth of Iranian funds in a whole new light…