New Virus Aimed at Saudi Oil Giant, We All May Be Next -- Redmondmag.com

Barney's Blog

New Virus Aimed at Saudi Oil Giant, We All May Be Next

Shamoon is a new, or partly new virus that looked to be just a warmed-over version of Flame (probably Flame tweaked by some low-level scripter).

Shamoon might have been used in an attack on Saudi Aramco, the national oil company (this outfit is worth more than Apple!). But that may be only the beginning. Now that this little beastie is getting some press, expect a lot of little hackers to start spreading the goodness.

Successful attacks are no fun. Shamoon doesn't just steal your data; it covers its tracks by messing with your boot record. This thing rewrites more files than a KGB agent. Before long your PC is dead in the water.

So far the virus is used in a targeted way, experts say. My hope is that anti-virus definitions can handle all the variants before worse stuff happens. I think the vendors can handle it.

Posted by Doug Barney on 08/22/2012 at 1:19 PM

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