Pure Goof Wiper

The Pure Goof Wiper is a file-wiper Trojan that can delete the non-essential files on your PC, such as downloads, documents and other media. The Pure Goof Wiper attacks multiple drives and may erase your folders, as well as their contents. Users should keep secure backups of their work for its safety from these attacks and have anti-malware products remove the Pure Goof Wiper on sight.

What's not So Goofy about this Software

The ongoing investigation of malware researchers dredges up a new, Windows Trojan that appears to owe its development to a revenge motive. The Pure Goof Wiper, unlike the majority of the threats of today, scans the PC for files, not to lock them and extort money, but to erase them in their entirety. The attacks, also, are less discerning than those of the average file-locker Trojan like Hidden Tear and have a potential for harming significant quantities of media significantly.

The Pure Goof Wiper is a Windows program with the internal name of 'ProgectRevenge' in its directory setup. Its associated copyright date claims an origin of 2017, but malware researchers find no samples of the Trojan dating to before the current year. The unlucky users running it will provoke the deletion of all files and folders in various locations, including their Downloads, Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Application Data, and Local Settings (all of which tie into the Windows accounts). Even more destructively than that, the Pure Goof Wiper also targets the Program Files directory and the entirety of drives E, D, G, I and F.

The Pure Goof Wiper skips the 'H' drive for unknowable reasons and, also, doesn't harm the Windows directory. However, for most purposes, the Pure Goof Wiper deletes the majority of other information and media throughout the PC without providing the victim with any recovery or ransoming process. Most file-wiping Trojans perform roles in espionage-based operations related to government network attacks, but malware experts rate the Pure Goof Wiper as being, more likely, the low-level work of an unprofessional threat actor.

Purifying Your Drives of a Pretty Important Goof-Up

The thoroughness of the Pure Goof Wiper's attacks emphasizes the need that all Windows users have for keeping backups in appropriately secure locations, instead of on a local drive. Cloud services with proper login protection and peripheral storage devices that you detach when they're not in active use are two ways of neutering the Pure Goof Wiper's payload. Otherwise, malware experts can't guarantee recovery of any data, and your basic operating system's files may be all that remains intact.

No infection strategies have yet to express any links with the Pure Goof Wiper, which may not have a live campaign. Trojans with file-wiping characteristics can become introduced to a network that's at risk from attacks like brute-forcing logins with poor password choices, by e-mail attachments or torrent downloads. Nonetheless, most anti-malware products can identify and delete the Pure Goof Wiper as long as the threat actor doesn't supervise the installation directly.

The Pure Goof Wiper is far more dangerous than most of the Trojans that malware researchers catch, lately. However, it's not hard to program software with an indiscriminately-deleting payload, and all Windows users should protect themselves with a corresponding sense of duty.