Destructive malware that hit Sony Pictures similar to other data wiping programs

A malware program with data wiping functionality that was recently used to attack Sony Pictures Entertainment bears technical similarities to destructive malware that affected organizations in South Korea and the Middle East in the past.

Security researchers from Kaspersky Lab, Symantec and Blue Coat Systems independently reported that Trojan Destover, the malicious program used in the Sony Pictures attack, relied on a legitimate commercial driver called EldoS RawDisk to overwrite data and master boot records.

That same driver was used by a piece of malware called Shamoon that is believed to have been used in August 2012 to render up to 30,000 computers inoperable at Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia.

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