Researchers find cyber-sabotage malware that may predate Stuxnet by five years
FAST16 could be the first cyberweapon, and its effects could be with us today
Infosec outfit SentinelOne found malware that tries to induce errors in engineering and physics simulation software and therefore represents an attempt at sabotage, and suggests it was created years before the Stuxnet worm that aimed to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges.
The company’s Vitaly Kamluk discussed the malware in a talk at the Black Hat Asia conference today. SentinelOne has also published a blog post about the malware.
Kamluk told the conference the discovery came about after he wondered if known nation-state-espionage tools like Flame, Animal Farm, and Project Sauron were the first of their kind. All three shared use of the Lua language and virtual machine, so he went looking for similar software.
That search led to a malware sample uploaded to VirusTotal in 2016 that includes a reference to “fast16”.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
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