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Data-Wiping Malware Destroys Data At Italian and UAE Oil and Gas Companies (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new variant of the Shamoon malware was discovered on the network of an Italian and UAE oil and gas company. While the damage at the UAE firm is currently unknown, the malware has been confirmed to have destroyed files on about ten percent of the Italian company's PC fleet. Shamoon is one of the most dangerous strains of malware known to date. It was first deployed in two separate incidents that targeted the infrastructure of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's largest oil producer, in 2012 and 2016. During those incidents, the malware wiped files and replaced them with propaganda images (burning U.S. flag and body of Alan Kurdi). The 2012 attack was devastating in particular, with Shamoon wiping data on over 30,000 computers, crippling the company's activity for weeks. Historically, the malware has been tied to the Iranian regime, but it's unclear if Iranian hackers were behind these latest attacks. This new Shamoon version was revealed to the world when an Italian engineer uploaded the malware on VirusTotal, triggering detections at all major cyber-security firms across the globe.
https://it.slashdot.org/story/...
"The 2012 attack was devastating in particular, with Shamoon wiping data on over 30,000 computers, crippling the company's activity for weeks."
Sounds like business as usual... it's not worth the time to spend the money to protect against these problems... better off losing a whole lot fucking more money when it happens and then curse the department they directly prevented from protecting this problem.
This is worse than just shooting oneself in the foot, its more like making sure the trigger gets pulled no matter what.
This problem is everywhere too, this one just happens to make it into the news. I don't think businesses are really aware of how much money it hemorrhages in vain attempts to save money.
The lost productivity, the T&E required to restore that lost productivity, without exception, has always cost more than was ever saved.
I have seen companies experience multi million dollars losses because they did not see the value in a product that cost a couple of hundred K. This is especially true for redundant power. Backup power generation is stupid cheap compared to the losses you face from a 24 hour power outage. All those employees getting paid for doing no work is just the start of it.
Most businesses fundamentally do not understand security, and most programmers fundamentally work against good security, and so does most of the industry. Security has always been an after the fact effort.