According to the research department of the global cyber security company ESET, several organizations in Ukraine have been hit by a cyberattack involving a new malicious data wiper software called HermeticWiper, which has affected hundreds of computers on their networks.
The attack came hours after a series of denial of service (DDoS) attacks to shut down several major websites in the country.
The malware detected by ESET products as Win32 / KillDisk.NCV was first detected shortly before 5 p.m. local time (3 pm UTC) on Wednesday. The timestamp of the data wiper, meanwhile, indicates that it was created on December 28, 2021, suggesting that the attack may have been in preparation for some time.
Earlier on Wednesday, some Ukrainian websites were shut down following a new wave of DDoS attacks targeting the country for weeks.
In mid-January, another data-destruction program swept Ukraine. Named WhisperGate, the wiper disguised itself as ransomware and had something in common with the NotPetya attack that struck Ukraine in June 2017 before wreaking havoc around the world.
