Shamoon is a new malware destroys virtual machines

Malware is all the rage. The development of new technologies has given a boost to viruses, Trojans, worms, ransomware and all kinds of malicious software variants, which proliferate on the Internet waiting for the arrival of any unwary. But… what would happen if malware were now given to destroy virtual machines? Well, this is the case of Shamoon, a malware that originally appeared on the network of an oil company in Saudi Arabia, and which now has a new variant that destroys virtual machines.

Shamoon, the malware that destroys virtual machines

This new Shamoon strain is the second variant of this aggressive malware. The first variant was discovered at the end of November last year, when a group of security researchers found it after cleaning malware on a hard drive.

The first version featured a burning United States flag, but this second version shows the unfortunate photograph of the Syrian refugee boy who drowned while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece.

The previous version of Shamoon eventually erased the content of the hard drives of more than 30, 000 terminals, forcing the Saudi Aramco company to move its physical desktops to virtual ones to stop the infection and protect its systems. However, this measure was not enough, since Shamoon has returned with the ability to destroy virtual machines as well.

According to what they tell us from ArsTechnica and the report of the Palo Alto Networks researchers, the latest variant of Shamoon has been updated to include this functionality, with which it accesses virtual systems and destroys their content. The perpetrator of the attack could have used some credential to log in to the infrastructure management systems of the virtual machines, allowing access to them.