Report – FBI warns of catastrophic new malware

Washington, D.C. – The FBI is reportedly warning U.S. businesses of a catastrophic new malware that may have links to the governments of North Korea and/or Iran. According to Reuters, the malware has previously been used in destructive attacks against businesses in the Middle East and Asia, but was detected for the first time in the U.S. in a recent cyberattack that shut down corporate email for a week and damaged other systems at Sony Pictures Entertainment.



The malware overrides all hard drive data on computers, including the master boot drive, making it extremely difficult to reboot computers or recover any data stored on the hard drive. Some of the software used in the attack against Sony was compiled in Korean, but the FBI is not commenting on whether it originated in North Korea.



The same malware has been used to attack the systems of businesses in South Korea and Sony is releasing the upcoming film “The Interview,” a comedy about an assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un which the country has denounced as an act of war.