Wipers from Russia’s most cut-throat hackers rain destruction on Ukraine
One of the world’s most ruthless and advanced hacking groups, the Russian state-controlled Sandworm, launched a series of destructive cyberattacks in the country’s ongoing war against neighboring Ukraine, researchers reported Thursday.
In April, the group targeted a Ukrainian university with two wipers, a form of malware that aims to permanently destroy sensitive data and often the infrastructure storing it. One wiper, tracked under the name Sting, targeted fleets of Windows computers by scheduling a task named DavaniGulyashaSdeshka, a phrase derived from Russian slang that loosely translates to “eat some goulash,” researchers from ESET said. The other wiper is tracked as Zerlot.
A not-so-common target
Then, in June and September, Sandworm unleashed multiple wiper variants against a host of Ukrainian critical infrastructure targets, including organizations active in government, energy, and logistics. The targets have long been in the crosshairs of Russian hackers. There was, however, a fourth, less common target—organizations in Ukraine’s grain industry.