FortiGuard Labs is aware of new wiper malware observed in the wild attacking Ukrainian interests. The wiper was found by security researchers today at ESET. The wiper is dubbed CaddyWiper. Preliminary analysis reveals that the wiper malware erases user data and partition information from attached drives. According to the tweet, CaddyWiper does not share any code with HermeticWiper or IsaacWiper or any known malware families.This is a breaking news event. More information will be added when relevant updates are available.For further reference about Ukrainian wiper attacks please reference our Threat Signal from January and February. Also, please refer to our recent blog that encompasses the recent escalation in Ukraine, along with salient advice about patch management and why it is important, especially in today’s political climate.Is this the Work of Nobelium/APT29?At this time, there is not enough information to correlate this to Nobelium/APT29 or nation state activity. Was this Sample Signed? Unlike the HermeticWiper sample related to Ukrainian attacks, this sample is unsigned.Why is Malware Signed?Malware is often signed by threat actors as a pretense to evade AV or any other security software. Signed malware allows threat actors to evade and effectively bypass detection, guaranteeing a higher success rate. What is the Status of Coverage? FortiGuard Labs has AV coverage in place for publicly available samples as:W32/CaddyWiper.NCX!tr
