There is a kind of dangerous chimera on the Internet with multiple heads, different names, but which constitutes the same threat: Gamaredona group of Russian hackers that has created a disturbing malware called LitterDrifter that is spread by USB and that somehow has reached Chile.
In the contemporary world, there are many digital computer threats, and to a large extent most of them today focus on smartphones. Where perhaps the greatest threat lies in the Remote Access Trojans (RAT) that can infect a device by opening a simple image.
But occasionally particular cases arise, such as that of the Gamaredon hacking group, also known as Primitive Bear, ACTINIUM, Armageddon and Shuckworm. Since they have created LitterDrifter, this malware for computers that spreads through USB devices.
A piece of malicious software that is curiously distributed as if we lived in the year 2008, but still remains a dangerous threat for everything it does.
The risks of Gamaredon’s LitterDrifter malware and its arrival in Chile
A recent report published by the people of Check Point marks all the details around this malware, written in Visual Basic Scripting, capable of spreading between the devices that use it, expanding its contagion network through units that have already been contaminated.
Originally this malware had been created with the aim of directly affecting computer systems in Ukraine, particularly including those computers that are not always connected to the web and that continue to depend on physical storage media such as USB sticks.
However, the firm’s report reveals that the malware has already been found in the United States, Vietnam, Chile, Poland, Germany and Hong Kong:
This case curiously reminds us of another worm created with the support of government authorities. In the case of LitterDrifter it was Russia, and in the case of Stuxnet It was the United States and Israel’s own government.
In this last example, a piece of malware designed to infect a limited group of offline computers was also created during a stage of the conflict with Iran. But in the end everything got out of control and the worm ended up installing itself automatically on more than 100,000 computers.
The number of total computers infected today with this malicious program is not known. But in the end it is very likely that history will repeat itself with Stuxnet.