StoneDrill Disk Wiping Malware Found Targeting European Industries
Mar 07, 2017
A new disk wiping malware has been uncovered targeting a petroleum company in Europe, which is quite similar to the mysterious disk wiper malware Shamoon that wiped data from 35,000 computers at Saudi Arabia's national oil company in 2012. Disk wiping malware has the ability to cripple any organization by permanently wiping out data from all hard drive and external storage on a targeted machine, causing great financial and reputational damage. Security researchers from Moscow-based antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab discovered the new wiper StoneDrill while researching last November's re-emergence of Shamoon malware (Shamoon 2.0) attacks – two attacks occurred in November and one in late January. Shamoon 2.0 is the more advanced version of Shamoon malware that reportedly hit 15 government agencies and organizations across the world, wipes data and takes control of the computer's boot record, preventing the computers from being turned back on. Meanwhile, Kaspersky resea