ESET Research Podcast: A year of fighting rockets, soldiers and wipers in Ukraine

With the Russian invasion on February 24th^th, 2022, the age of wipers seems to have arrived as more and more variants of destructive malware try to hack sensitive Ukrainian systems. Although such attacks were unheard of in the years prior to the Russian invasion, the emergence of detected wiper incidents across sectors – and later countries as well – reached an unprecedented pace.

Blaming Russian cyberattack groups as the perpetrators behind the CaddyWiper, NikoWiper, RansomBoggs, or Prestige ransomware may seem like an obvious choice, but evidence-based attribution is a different matter. In this episode of the ESET Research podcast, researchers Anton Cherepanov and Robert Lipovský explain what led them to this important sample and how they were able to pin several attacks against the Russian cyber group that is perhaps most well-known for NotPetya and Industroyer.

The guests on this episode also reminisce about the events of February 23^rd, 2022; compare HermeticWiper with its successors; and disclose the range of operating systems that were targeted and the level of success achieved by those attacks. As seasoned experts follow cyberattacks in Ukraine, Anton and Robert share their views on why some wipers use ransomware as disguises while others neglect to use any disguises.

If you are interested in the cyber aspects of the first year of Russia’s war on Ukraine, want to know more about the detected malware families, their geographic distribution, the groupings in which they are used, or their level of sophistication, listen to the latest episode of ESET Research Podcasts hosted by ESET Distinguished Researcher Aryeh Goretsky and guests ESET Principal Researcher Robert Lipovský and ESET Senior Malware Researcher Anton Cherepanov.

For additional information, visit A ​​year of wiper strikes in Ukraine.