The United Nations is reportedly preparing a cyber security alert that warns nations on the high security risks attributed to the recently detected computer malware 'Flame' even as some IT experts downplays the virus' actual capability.

According to Marco Obiso of the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU), countries need to be properly oriented on the intrusion capability of Flame, which was co-discovered by internet security expert Kaspersky Lab with the UN agency.

Details that have emerged so far pointed to the likelihood that Flame, which Kaspersky said was deployed mainly to spy on computer systems and gather information from infected machines, could exceed the damages wrought by Stuxnet two years ago, Mr Obiso said.

Stuxnet was thought to have targeted Iran's controversial nuclear program in 2010 and allegedly pushed back that country's nuclear capability for a number of years.

"This is the most serious warning we have ever put out ... I think it is a much more serious threat than Stuxnet," Mr Obiso was reported by Reuters as saying on Wednesday.

He added that ITU experts are currently monitoring the global spread of Flame, which Kaspersky said was first observed in Tehran, Iran and has so far infected computer systems in nations around the Middle East, Europe and North America

Kaspersky and ITU staffs were on guard to watch possible mutations of the virus to possibly keep the world a step ahead on its attack patterns, Mr Obiso said.

According to Kaspersky, Flame is capable of recording voice and IM conversations performed on a specific system, manipulate wireless communications via Bluetooth and capture computer screen shots.

To date, the Russian cyber security experts believes that as many as 5000 machines all over the world have been infected by Flame, which it added could have been financed, developed and deployed by the same nation or nations responsible for Stuxnet.

A report by The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday quoted Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon as saying that his government may have been responsible for Flame, which has been around for at least five years sleuthing on various government systems.

"Israel is blessed to be a nation possessing superior technology. These achievements of ours open up all kinds of possibilities for us," the high-ranking Israeli official said in an interview.

Flame has so far eluded Kaspersky experts' efforts of tracking down its first data-erasing form, prompting the company to warn that the malware pose more serious threats than any other viruses unleashed and detected in the past.

But Jeff Moss, head of security for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), cautioned that Kaspersky and ITU may be attributing undue attention on Flame.

Mr Moss told Reuters that the malware may have been designed with deliberate complexities, which could take internet security experts considerable amount of time to take down the virus, but he assured that Flame will not spell the end of the cyber world as we know it.