Sony Pictures Malware Tied to Seoul, “Shamoon” Cyber-attacks - Ars Technica
Ars Technica, By Sean Gallagher
The “wiper” malware that knocked Sony Pictures’ corporate network offline for over a week, now being called Destover, bears a striking resemblance not only to the “DarkSeoul” malware that struck South Korean companies last year, but the Shamoon “wiper” that struck Saudi Aramco in 2012, according to analysis by Kaspersky Labs and other security researchers. While there is nothing in the analysis that would tie the three attacks to the same malware developers, they all used similar techniques, as well as some of the same commercial Windows drivers to attack the hard drives of their victims.
In an e-mail exchange with Ars, Kaspersky Lab security researcher Kurt Baumgartner said, “Of the three, the Shamoon and Destover implementations share the most similarities, and based on these similarities it is possible that there was shared guidance or expertise between the two projects. All three share operational similarities.” Read more.
