(The Hosting News) – A new, two-stage target attack was detailed by security firm Seculert on Thursday. Known as Shamoon, the issue is hitting a number of companies with unwanted problems. Interestingly enough, the virus targets machines, deletes data, thus rendering systems unusable.

“The interesting part of this malware is that instead of staying under the radar and collect information, the malware was designed to overwrite and wipe the files and the Master-Boot Record of the computer,” commented the security provider via its blog.

The stolen information is forwarded to an “internal machine” within the networking belonging to the victim company.

Seculert analyzed an IP address before addressing the issue. The machine is used as a proxy once controlled to infect other systems. In another stage, the hacker executes the actual malware, wiping evidence pertaining to the stolen data.

The security company emphasized that it wasn’t known who administered that attack. However, recent high-profile viruses have been noticed on an international level with malware such as Flame and Stuxnet likely originating from nation states.

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