VPNFilter malware has tried to attack a chlorine distillation plant located in a village named Aulska in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. Luckily the Ukrainian Secret Service has intervened and successfully stopped the attack on the plant.
“The continuation of the cyber attack could have led to a breakdown of technological processes and a possible crash,” the SBU released a press statement in which it cited Russia of operating the malware and starting the attack.
VPNFilter is a malware strain that is currently targeting a large pool of router models. The strain can also survive router reboots. The malware can also intercept traffic passing through the router and also block the device it infects. It has been reported by the Ukrainian Secret Service that the malware has affected chlorine distillation station networking equipment.
The malware has an ability to detect sensitive events and warn its operators which can be used to pivot the attack on organisations, the group behind this malware is an advanced group of Hackers known as APT28 according to the FBI, the agency also believes that the unit is operating out of Russian military intelligence services.
The VPNFilter was deemed to be a giant cyber attack aimed at Ukraine, security firms have found a botnet that consists of more than 500,000 devices.
The plant’s chlorine is used for drinking water in the entire nation and attacking that would be a perfect target to damage the operations of the nation. At present, there is no evidence that this was a planned attack the VPNFilter spreads randomly by scanning all the ports on the IPv4 address and it might likely be landed at that plant because it is running a vulnerable firmware in its router.
