Wiper Malware: Destructive Cyber Attacks

Understanding and defending against data destruction attacks.

Wipers destroy data without ransom demands.

Notable Wipers

- NotPetya (2017): $10B damage
- Shamoon: Saudi Aramco
- WhisperGate: Ukraine 2022
- HermeticWiper: Ukraine 2022
- CaddyWiper: Ukraine 2022

- MBR destruction
- File system corruption
- Overwriting data
- Encryption without keys
- Firmware destruction

- Air-gapped backups
- Immutable storage
- Network segmentation
- Behavior-based detection
- Incident response plans