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FortiGuard Labs is aware of new reports of Industroyer2, the successor to the Industroyer malware. First discovered in 2016, Industroyer was attributed to energy grid attacks in Kiev, Ukraine. The attack resulted in a loss of electricity for over an hour and was attributed to the Russian government (Sandworm). The latest discovery of Industroyer2 was discovered by researchers at ESET (who also discovered Industroyer in 2015).Industroyer is an Industrial Control System (ICS) specific malware that is modular and was discovered to have capabilities to control electrical substations and circuit breakers. It uses industrial communication protocols and techniques to conduct its operations via a global industry standard used by many critical infrastructure verticals.This latest variant of Industroyer2 was seen targeting ICS devices within electrical substations and then trying to erase any evidence of its attack by running CaddyWiper malware along with other Linux and Solaris (UNIX) wipers. It is currently unknown at this time how the threat actors were able to compromise and obtain initial access before entering into the ICS network. For further details on CaddyWiper, please see our Threat Signal here. This is a current news event, further details will be published when available.What are the Technical Details of this Attack?Industroyer2 is a Windows executable file and was executed via a scheduled task on April 8th. According to the analysis, it was compiled on March 23rd which suggests that the threat actors (Sandworm) behind this attack had planned it for over two weeks. Industroyer2 communicates over the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol, which is used by ICS/SCADA devices to communicate. This variant is different from the original Industroyer, which supported multiple ICS protocols.Caddywiper was deployed via a group policy object (GPO) to likely thwart any forensic recovery and analysis. It was found on machines that contained Industroyer2 installations. Other malware (ORCSHRED, SOLOSHRED, AWFULSHRED) found in these campaigns were destructive Linux and Solaris (UNIX) versions that acted as a worm and wiper and were deployed via shell scripts.What Operating Systems are Affected?Windows, Linux and Solaris systems are affected.What is the Severity of this Attack?Medium. This is limited specifically to targeted attacks.What is the Status of Coverage?FortiGuard Labs has the following (AV) signatures in place for publicly available samples as:W32/Agent.AECG!trData/KillDisk.NDA!trAll network IOC’s are blocked by the WebFiltering client.
