Stonedrill Is The Newest Wiper Malware To Hit Pcs

There are a lot of malware types that induce various effects into a system and make it act in various ways. Needless to say, none of them are good. Malware threats usually come in waves, meaning that if one target was hit by a type of malware, chances are that another victim will fall prey to the same type sometime in the near future.

A recently discovered malware threat is StoneDrill. StroneDrill is a type of malware that completely wiped the user’s disk. This malware was detected and then further investigated by Kaspersky Labs.

It managed to find StoneDrill and detect its effects in its early stages. There have only been 2 cases detected so far, so it might mean that the wave of attacks could just be at the start. The 2 attacks took place in Europe and the Middle East respectively.

Shamoon 2.0 is another type of malware that is actually very similar to StoneDrill, and it is the reason why Kaspersky Labs was able to detect the latter in the first place. It would seem that upon having the magnifying lens on Shamoon 2.0, it found StoneDrill.

This is how the malware was explained, although it is yet unknown how StoneDrill spreads. That question might get an answer in the near future, but for the moment security experts can’t really comment on it since this particular threat is still new.

Once on the attacked machine it injects itself into the memory process of the user’s preferred browser. During this process it uses two sophisticated anti-emulation techniques aimed at fooling security solutions installed on the victim machine. The malware then starts destroying the computer’s disc files.

It’s never good when internet users have to deal with a new malware attack, but it’s a good thing that security experts like Kaspersky Labs are right on it from day 1. This boost the efficiency of the search for a countermeasure, meaning that the chances of new devices to get infected are reduced considerably.