HermeticWiper Malware & The Russian-Ukrainian Cyber War |
Deep Instinct
By Ido KringelThreat Intelligence Researcher
Published: 2022-03-01 · Archived: 2026-04-02 11:06:13 UTC
On February 24, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict escalated into an invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces.
However, these hostilities were not limited to the physical domain. Cyber warfare is happening in parallel to the
armed conflict, becoming an inseperable part of the hostile exchanges between these nations. 
Our Threat Research team noted various cyberattacks deployed by Russia in the weeks preceding the invasion
aimed at sowing chaos and disrupting communications within Ukraine’s government and military institutions.
While the most publicized of these cyberattacks were the DDoS attacks, official government website take-downs,
and website defacements, the most disruptive attack was a disk-wiping malware called WhisperGate which we
covered in a previous post.  
On February 23, one day before the larger Russian land invasion began, Ukrainian organizations were targeted by
another destructive disk-wiping malware dubbed HermeticWiper designed to wipe a computer’s hard disk data
and destroy the Master Boot Record and partitions, making any impacted machines inoperable. 
What is HermeticWiper  
HermeticWiper makes use of a driver belonging to an outdated version of EaseUS Partition Master application,
developed by CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development. The attackers used a benign, digitally signed kernel driver to
evade detection while utilizing the driver's ability to interact with storage devices and acquire low-level disk
access for retrieving partition information, corrupting the device’s disks. 
While the driver is digitally signed by ‘Hermetica Digital Ltd’ (hence the wiper name), the certificate is now
revoked.  
Figure1 – left – EaseUS invalid signed driver; right – HermeticWiper signed certificate
Figure1 – left – EaseUS invalid signed driver; right – HermeticWiper signed certificate
The malware stores 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the driver in MS-compressed copies within its resource section,
deploying it according to the operating system version. Forensic analysis reveals that the malware has several
variants, one with a timestamp dating to December 2021, indicating the attack has been 'in progress’ for quite
some time. 
We've observed several attacks which precede the execution of the wiper. In one case, the attackers exploited a
known vulnerability in Microsoft SQL Server (CVE-2021-1636) to gain a foothold in one of the Ukrainian
organizations. In a separate case, the attackers gained access to the network via malicious SMB activity against a
Microsoft Exchange Server, which led to credential theft, and later to the deployment of the wiper. Several other
https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/hermeticwiper-malware-the-russian-ukrainian-cyber-war
Page 1 of 4

methods were also employed, including the Apache Tomcat vulnerability, which allowed the attackers to run
PowerShell commands, dump credentials, and execute the malware. 
When executed, HermeticWiper will first gain higher privileges by utilizing Access Token Manipulation [T1134]
and then obtain "SeBackupPrivilege" (which allows it to retrieve any file content) and "SeLoadDriverPrivilege"
(which allows it to load/unload any driver). As we previously mentioned, HermeticWiper uses EaseUS signed
driver in order to manipulate the disk. 
Next, HermeticWiper will disable Volume Shadow Service (vss) and disable crash dumps by modifying specific
registry keys, ensuring that no backups will be available and covering its tracks. 
It will then enumerate the system’s physical drives. For each, it will then corrupt the first 512 bytes and destroy
the Master Boot Record (MBR). 
While this should be enough to make any computer inoperable, HermeticWiper doesn't stop there. It next checks
for NTFS or FAT file systems and corrupts them, ensuring that systems with both MBR and GPT drives are
compromised. The Wiper will then force system shutdown to complete the wiping operation. 
Similar to the previous WhisperGate attack, where the wiper was disguised as ransomware, the attackers appear to
be using PartyTicket ransomware as a decoy in addition to the HermeticWiper malware to distract from the wiper
attacks.
Russia-Ukraine Cyber Warfare 
As we mention above, Russia started its cyberattack campaign long before the armed forces invasion. However,
after the HermeticWiper attack began on February 23 we’ve seen a surge in cyber warfare between the two
countries. 
Here is the timeline of the major events: 
IOCs 
Context  sha256 
EaseUS driver  e5f3ef69a534260e899a36cec459440dc572388defd8f1d98760d31c700f42d5 
EaseUS driver  b01e0c6ac0b8bcde145ab7b68cf246deea9402fa7ea3aede7105f7051fe240c1 
EaseUS driver  b6f2e008967c5527337448d768f2332d14b92de22a1279fd4d91000bb3d4a0fd 
https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/hermeticwiper-malware-the-russian-ukrainian-cyber-war
Page 2 of 4

EaseUS driver  fd7eacc2f87aceac865b0aa97a50503d44b799f27737e009f91f3c281233c17d 
EaseUS driver  96b77284744f8761c4f2558388e0aee2140618b484ff53fa8b222b340d2a9c84 
EaseUS driver  8c614cf476f871274aa06153224e8f7354bf5e23e6853358591bf35a381fb75b 
EaseUS driver  23ef301ddba39bb00f0819d2061c9c14d17dc30f780a945920a51bc3ba0198a4 
EaseUS driver  2c7732da3dcfc82f60f063f2ec9fa09f9d38d5cfbe80c850ded44de43bdb666d 
HermeticWiper  1bc44eef75779e3ca1eefb8ff5a64807dbc942b1e4a2672d77b9f6928d292591  
HermeticWiper  0385eeab00e946a302b24a91dea4187c1210597b8e17cd9e2230450f5ece21da 
HermeticWiper  ca3c4cd3c2edc816c1130e6cac9bdd08f83aef0b8e6f3d09c2172c854fab125f 
HermeticWiper  2c10b2ec0b995b88c27d141d6f7b14d6b8177c52818687e4ff8e6ecf53adf5bf 
HermeticWiper  3c557727953a8f6b4788984464fb77741b821991acbf5e746aebdd02615b1767 
PartyTicket  4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d24112327c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382 
Predictions and guidance 
The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict is already causing a significant escalation in the quantity and scope of
attacks from many, disparate parties. Elevated activity is being seen from state-sponsored groups, non-state-sponsored actors, and by independent hacktivists like the Anonymous group.  
The unprecedented raft of sanctions enacted against Russia may invoke further retaliation and response in the
form of cyberattacks by Russian-based organized cybercrime groups and state-sponsored or contracted actors. We
have already seen several cyber gangs supporting Russia threaten to use their resources to strike back against
nations and organizations that may coordinate cyberattacks against Russia.  
https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/hermeticwiper-malware-the-russian-ukrainian-cyber-war
Page 3 of 4

We estimate the ongoing physical conflict escalation combined with the new sanctions will lead to a higher risk
profile; this will be heightened for sectors associated with sanctions and have high economic or national security
value. These may include financial services, aviation and aerospace, energy, and critical infrastructure.   
Following are some key points to consider or act upon given the changes in the risk profile:  
Threat actors are targeting organizations with phishing attempts related to the conflict. Security staff should
remind or re-educate employees to minimize successful social engineering attempts.
Every application in the organization can be a potential backdoor to the organization. These applications
need to be updated frequently with the latest security patches. Organizations should apply a strict
application control policy while limiting applications which are not critical to their business.
Scripts are a powerful execution mechanism. There are entire industries (healthcare, for example) where
most users in the organization have no need to execute scripts. Security staff should restrict scripts
execution based on a user’s roles and devices.
To ensure increased visibility, it is recommended to configure or enable additional layers of logging when
and where available.
Incident response requires considerable time and resources. The initial response of the security staff to a
possible threat can make a huge difference in the overall impact of the attack impact. Trained security staff
with a dedicated playbook for incident response scenarios should prevent additional infection and lateral
movement inside the organization.
In order to be as evasive as possible threat actors have learned to live-off-the-land. With the use of
PowerShell and other libraries in the operating system, bad actors can stay under the radar. SOC operators
should be extremely attentive to potential LOLbins attacks.
Protection from HermeticWiper with Deep Instinct 
Deep Instinct prevents HermeticWiper and PartyTicket statically prior to execution, stopping it before it can
deploy. 
If you’d like to learn more, please request a demo. 
Source: https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/hermeticwiper-malware-the-russian-ukrainian-cyber-war
https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/hermeticwiper-malware-the-russian-ukrainian-cyber-war
Page 4 of 4