I run a single SSD gaming PC, which I’m aware is giving me a wonderful case of ‘single-point-of-failure-itus.’ Which is why my ears (eyes?) perked up when I read about GigaWiper, a wonderfully-named malware that can potentially do terrible things to your storage drives.
Microsoft has published an analysis into GigaWiper’s capabilities, and it looks to be a multi-faceted, tricksy piece of malware with a pretty unique USP (via MalwareBytes). It appears to be the result of several malware families stitched together, and is capable of wiping your drives at the physical disk level, “overwriting raw disk content and removing partition metadata.”
The nasty little beastie has several ways to irreversibly destroy your data. There’s a Windows drive secure wiper for starters, which targets an installation and performs multiple overwrites using different byte patterns, making the original data virtually impossible to retrieve.
Another method identifies physical disk drives, confirms which drive contains a Windows installation, removes the partition references from your other drives, overwrites the raw disk content with randomized data, and reboots your system for good measure.