Global ransomware attack was meant to be destructive, not collect money
A global ransomware outbreak Tuesday was inherently designed to be destructive in nature, according to private sector cybersecurity researchers. An analysis of Petya conducted by Comae Technologies’ Matthieu Suiche reveals that computer code in the June 27 version of the malware is different than previous samples which were tied to incidents involving monetary gain. The primary difference between past Petya variants and Tuesday’s malware comes in the form of a small block of code that effectively commands the virus to “erase the Windows system’s Master Boot Record (MBR) on default,” said Suiche. “After comparing both implementations, we noticed that the current [implementation] that massively infected multiple entities in Ukraine was in fact a wiper, which just trashed the 25 first sector blocks of the disk,” Suiche wrote in a blog post. Petya effectively demolishes a key function of the victim computer’s boot process even before a victim has the chance to read any ransom […]
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