The Flame cyber-weapon was part of an intelligence-gathering operation designed to aid separate more physically disruptive attacks, the Washington Post has reported. If accurate this would posit Flame as the software that made more than one version of Stuxnet (discovered before Flame but now forensically connected to it) the effective tool it turned out to be when wielded against systems at Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. It probably furnished Iran’s enemies – including co-developer Israel – with enough data to attack a wide range of other targets.”]
Source: https://www.csoonline.com/article/2131887/flame-was-intelligence-gathering-tool-for-stuxnet.html