[Eye Opener] Ukraine Is Now Being Hit With 4 Different Strains Of Wiper Malware

Newly discovered data-destroying malware was found this week in attacks targeting Ukrainian organizations and deleting data across systems on compromised networks. "This new malware erases user data and partition information from attached drives," ESET Research Labs explained.

CaddyWiper is the fourth data wiper malware deployed in attacks in Ukraine since the start of 2022, with ESET Research Labs analysts previously discovering two others and Microsoft a third.

Large-scale cyberattacks have yet to be seen from Russia

Russian cyberattacks have been surprisingly limited since the outbreak of President Putin's war against Ukraine, but they haven't been absent. Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) tweeted Saturday, "Russian hackers keep on attacking Ukrainian information resources nonstop.... Despite all the involved enemy’s resources, the sites of the central governmental bodies are available. 

One day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, on February 23rd, ESET researchers spotted a data-wiping malware now known as HermeticWiper, used to target Ukraine together with ransomware decoys. They also discovered a data wiper they dubbed IsaacWiper and a new worm named HermeticWizard the attackers used to drop HermeticWiper wiper payloads, deployed the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

Microsoft also found a wiper now tracked as WhisperGate, used in data-wiping attacks against Ukraine in mid-January, disguised as ransomware. As Microsoft President and Vice-Chair Brad Smith said, these ongoing attacks with destructive malware against Ukrainian organizations "have been precisely targeted."

This contrasts with the indiscriminate NotPetya worldwide malware assault that hit Ukraine and other countries in 2017, an attack later linked to Sandworm, a Russian GRU Main Intelligence Directorate hacking group.

Such destructive attacks are part of a "massive wave of hybrid warfare," as the Ukrainian Security Service (SSU) described them right before the war started. 

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