SEKOIA.IO presents its Ransomware threat landscape for the first semester of 2022, with the following key points: * Ransomware victimology – recent evolutions * A busy first half of the year – several newcomers in the ransomware neighborhood * Cross-platform ransomware features trend * New extortion techniques * State-nexus groups carrying out ransomware campaigns * Ransomware threat groups’ Dark Web activities * A shift towards extortion without encryption?
Justice Department seizes $500K from North Korean hackers who targeted US medical organizations
The US Justice Department seized approximately half a million dollars that North Korean government-backed hackers had either extorted from US health care organizations or used to launder ransom payments, deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday as she touted an aggressive US strategy to claw back money for victims of ransomware attacks.
North Korean threat actor targets small and midsize businesses with H0lyGh0st ransomware
A group of actors originating from North Korea that MSTIC tracks as DEV-0530 has been developing and using ransomware in attacks since June 2021. This group, which calls itself H0lyGh0st, utilizes a ransomware payload with the same name.
Conti vs. LockBit: A Comparative Analysis of Ransomware Groups
We compare the targeting and business models of the Conti and LockBit ransomware groups using data analysis approaches. This will be presented in full at the 34th Annual FIRST Conference on June 27, 2022.
LockBit 3.0 introduces the first ransomware bug bounty program
The LockBit ransomware operation has released 'LockBit 3.0,' introducing the first ransomware bug bounty program and leaking new extortion tactics and Zcash cryptocurrency payment options.
The hateful eight: Kaspersky’s guide to modern ransomware groups’ TTPs
We want to familiarize the reader with the different stages of ransomware deployment and provide a visual guide to defending against targeted ransomware attacks.
Conti ransomware finally shuts down data leak, negotiation sites
The Conti ransomware operation has finally shut down its last public-facing infrastructure, consisting of two Tor servers used to leak data and negotiate with victims, closing the final chapter of the notorious cybercrime brand.
Cybercrime groups that specialize in stealing corporate data and demanding a ransom not to publish it have tried countless approaches to shaming their victims into paying. The latest innovation in ratcheting up the heat comes from the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group,…
Analysis and Attribution of the Eternity Ransomware: Timeline and Emergence of the Eternity Group
XVigil discovered a financially motivated threat actor group, dubbed Eternity group, actively operating on the internet, selling worms, stealers, DDoS tools, and ransomware builders.
New Linux-Based Ransomware Cheerscrypt Targets ESXi Devices
Trend Micro Research detected “Cheerscrypt”, a new Linux-based ransomware variant that compromises ESXi servers. We discuss our initial findings in this report.
Fears grow for smaller nations after ransomware attack on Costa Rica escalates
The Russia-linked ransomware gang demanded $20 million in ransom — and the overthrow of Costa Rica's elected government. Where does that leave smaller, equally vulnerable nation states?
President Rodrigo Chaves says Costa Rica is at war with Conti hackers
The president of Costa Rica says his country is "at war", as cyber-criminals cause major disruption to IT systems of numerous government ministries. Rodrigo Chaves said hackers infiltrated 27 government institutions, including municipalities and state-run utilities.
US links Thanos and Jigsaw ransomware to 55-year-old doctor
The US Department of Justice today said that Moises Luis Zagala Gonzalez (Zagala), a 55-year-old cardiologist with French and Venezuelan citizenship residing in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, created and rented Jigsaw and Thanos ransomware to cybercriminals.
Ransomware-as-a-service: Understanding the cybercrime gig economy and how to protect yourself
Microsoft coined the term “human-operated ransomware” to clearly define a class of attack driven by expert humane intelligence at every step of the attack chain and culminate in intentional business disruption and extortion. In this blog, we explain the ransomware-as-a-service affiliate model and disambiguate between the attacker tools and the various threat actors at play during a security incident.
Costa Rica declares national emergency after Conti ransomware attacks
The Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves has declared a national emergency following cyber attacks from Conti ransomware group on multiple government bodies. BleepingComputer also observed Conti published most of the 672 GB dump that appears to contain data belonging to the Costa Rican government agencies. The declaration was signed into law by Chaves on Sunday, May 8th, same day as the economist and former Minister of Finance effectively became the country's 49th and current president.
New Python-based Ransomware Targeting JupyterLab Web Notebooks
Researchers have disclosed what they say is the first-ever Python-based ransomware strain specifically designed to target exposed Jupyter notebooks, a web-based interactive computing platform that allows editing and running programs via a browser. "The attackers gained initial access via misconfigured environments, then ran a ransomware script that encrypts every file on a given path on the server and deletes itself after execution to conceal the attack," Assaf Morag, a data analyst at Aqua Security, said in a report.
Ukrainian Researcher Leaks Conti Ransomware Gang Data
A Ukrainian cybersecurity researcher has released a huge batch of data that came from the internal systems of the Conti ransomware gang. The researcher released the
TrickBot malware operation shuts down, devs move to BazarBackdoor
The TrickBot malware operation has shut down after its core developers move to the Conti ransomware gang to focus development on the stealthy BazarBackdoor and Anchor malware families.
Decryptor released for Maze, Egregor, and Sekhmet ransomware strains | ZDNet
A decryptor has been released for the Maze, Sekhmet, and Egregor ransomware after someone published the master decryption keys in a BleepingComputer forum post.
n February 2023, Kaspersky technologies detected a number of attempts to execute similar elevation-of-privilege exploits on Microsoft Windows servers belonging to small and medium-sized businesses in the Middle East, in North America, and previously in Asia regions. These exploits were very similar to already known Common Log File System (CLFS) driver exploits that we analyzed previously, but we decided to double check and it was worth it – one of the exploits turned out to be a zero-day, supporting different versions and builds of Windows, including Windows 11. The exploit was highly obfuscated with more than 80% of the its code being “junk” elegantly compiled into the binary, but we quickly fully reverse-engineered it and reported our findings to Microsoft. Microsoft assigned CVE-2023-28252 to the Common Log File System elevation-of-privilege vulnerability, and a patch was released on April 11, 2023, as part of April Patch Tuesday.
Rorschach – A New Sophisticated and Fast Ransomware
* Check Point Research (CPR) and Check Point Incident Response Team (CPIRT) encountered a previously unnamed ransomware strain, we dubbed Rorschach, deployed against a US-based company. Rorschach ransomware appears to be unique, sharing no overlaps that could easily attribute it to any known ransomware strain. In addition, it does not bear any kind of branding which is a common practice among ransomware groups. * The ransomware is partly autonomous, carrying out tasks that are usually manually performed during enterprise-wide ransomware deployment, such as creating a domain group policy (GPO). In the past, similar functionality was linked to LockBit 2.0. * The ransomware is highly customizable and contains technically unique features, such as the use of direct syscalls, rarely observed in ransomware. Moreover, due to different implementation methods, Rorschach is one of the fastest ransomware observed, by the speed of encryption. * The ransomware was deployed using DLL side-loading of a Cortex XDR Dump Service Tool, a signed commercial security product, a loading method which is not commonly used to load ransomware. The vulnerability was properly reported to Palo Alto Networks.
