#16 - Hacker History: NotPetya

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Defenders podcast, we recount some hacker history and tell the story of Amit Serper, a hacker and reverse engineer, who was instrumental in stopping the most devastating cyber attack in history: NotPetya.

On 27 June 2017, a major global cyberattack began (Ukrainian companies were among the first to state they were being attacked), utilizing a new variant of Petya. On that day, Kaspersky Lab reported infections in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but that the majority of infections targeted Russia and Ukraine, where more than 80 companies were initially attacked, including the National Bank of Ukraine. ESET estimated on 28 June 2017 that 80% of all infections were in Ukraine, with Germany second hardest hit with about 9%.Russian president Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, stated that the attack had caused no serious damage in Russia. Experts believed this was a politically-motivated attack against Ukraine, since it occurred on the eve of the Ukrainian holiday Constitution Day.

Kaspersky dubbed this variant "NotPetya", as it has major differences in its operations in comparison to earlier variants. McAfee engineer Christiaan Beek stated that this variant was designed to spread quickly, and that it had been targeting "complete energy companies, the power grid, bus stations, gas stations, the airport, and banks".

This episode was written by Nathaniel Nelson, narrated by Christopher Luft and produced by the team at LimaCharlie.

The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast: a show about cybersecurity and the people that defend the internet.