TORONTO: The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a secret five-page “flash” warning to US businesses late Monday of cyber attacks which use “destructive malware” to wipe data and may be impossible to recover. The report also said the malware has the power to shut down computer networks.
This malware has the capability to overwrite a victim host’s master boot record and all data files,” the report said, according to Reuters who independently obtained it. “The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods.”
The warning did not name a specific victim, which is standard protocol, but it comes less than a week after Sony Entertainment was hacked and five films were leaked, including the new version of Annie. The FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threats found during investigations, the FBI said in a statement Monday night.
Similar cyber attacks have been launched against companies based in South Korea and the Middle East, but if malware was indeed used against Sony, then it would be the first attack of its kind against a business in the United States, security experts said.
