Earlier this year, [redacted] encountered a relatively new ransomware threat actor that called themselves BianLian. We observed the actor deploying custom malware that was written in the Go programming language, which posed some initial, but not insurmountable, reverse-engineering challenges. 

BianLian used subtle techniques to exploit, enumerate, and move laterally in victim networks to remain undetected and aggressively worked to counter Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) protections during the encryption phase of their operations.…

Read More

Stealing information is fundamental to cybercriminals today to scope and gain access to systems, profile organizations, and execute bigger payday schemes like ransomware. Information stealer malware families including Prynt Stealer are often configured through a builder to facilitate the process for less sophisticated threat actors. However, Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers have uncovered the Prynt Stealer builder, also attributed with WorldWind, and DarkEye, has a secret backdoor in the code that ends up in every derivative copy and variant of these malware families.…

Read More

BlueSky ransomware is an emerging threat that researchers have been paying increasing attention to since its initial discovery in late June 2022. The ransomware has been observed being spread via trojanized downloads from questionable websites as well as in phishing emails.

Although infections at this time remain low, the ransomware’s characteristics, described below, suggest it has been carefully developed for a sustained campaign.…

Read More
New .NET-Based Ransomware Performs Targeted Attack

Several organizations, big or small, have been facing threats from Threat Actors (TAs) at a greater frequency than ever before. An organization’s primary danger remains losing access to their systems and data, which is further aggravated by the threat of TAs leaking the data if ransom requests are not fulfilled or the victim reaches out to law enforcement authorities. …

Read More
GoLang-based Ransomware targets multiple industries

Cyble Research Labs has observed that malware written in the programming language “Go” has recently been popular among Threat Actors (TAs). This is likely due to its cross-platform functionalities and the fact that it makes reverse engineering more difficult. We have seen many threats developed using the Go language, such as Ransomware, RAT, Stealer, etc.…

Read More
Background

Over the last year Mandiant has been tracking UNC3890, a cluster of activity targeting Israeli shipping, government, energy and healthcare organizations via social engineering lures and a potential watering hole. Mandiant assesses with moderate confidence this actor is linked to Iran, which is notable given the strong focus on shipping and the ongoing naval conflict between Iran and Israel.…

Read More

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)

Executive Summary

Beginning in early May 2022, Unit 42 observed a threat actor deploying Cuba Ransomware using novel tools and techniques. Using our naming schema, Unit 42 tracks the threat actor as Tropical Scorpius.

Here, we start with an overview of the ransomware and focus on an evolution of behavior observed leading up to deployment of Cuba Ransomware.…

Read More

Industrial Spy is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in April 2022. In some instances, the threat group appears to only exfiltrate and ransom data, while in other cases they encrypt, exfiltrate and ransom data. Industrial Spy started as a data extortion marketplace where criminals could buy large companies’ internal data; they promoted this marketplace using README.txt…

Read More

In June 2022, LockBit revealed version 3.0 of its ransomware. In this blog entry, we discuss the findings from our own technical analysis of this variant and its behaviors, many of which are similar to those of the BlackMatter ransomware.

In March 2022,  less than a year after LockBit 2.0 first emerged, researchers caught wind of an upcoming new variant of the LockBit ransomware. LockBit…

Read More

By Jim Walter & Aleksandar Milenkoski

LockBit 3.0 ransomware (aka LockBit Black) is an evolution of the prolific LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) family, which has roots that extend back to BlackMatter and related entities. After critical bugs were discovered in LockBit 2.0 in March 2022, the authors began work on updating their encryption routines and adding several new features designed to thwart researchers.…

Read More

We look into a recent attack orchestrated by the Black Basta ransomware group that used the banking trojan QakBot as a means of entry and movement and took advantage of the PrintNightmare vulnerability to perform privileged file operations.

Since it became operational in April, Black Basta has garnered notoriety for its recent attacks on 50 organizations around the world and its use of double extortion, a modern ransomware tactic in which attackers encrypt confidential data and threaten to leak it if their demands are not met.…

Read More

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)

Executive Summary

HelloXD is a ransomware family performing double extortion attacks that surfaced in November 2021. During our research we observed multiple variants impacting Windows and Linux systems. Unlike other ransomware groups, this ransomware family doesn’t have an active leak site; instead it prefers to direct the impacted victim to negotiations through TOX chat and onion-based messenger instances.…

Read More

This blog post was authored by Jérôme Segura

There are many techniques threat actors use to slow down analysis or, even better, evade detection. Perhaps the most popular method is to detect virtual machines commonly used by security researchers and sandboxing solutions.

Reverse engineers are accustomed to encountering code snippets that check certain registry keys, looking for specific values indicating the presence of VMware or Virtual Box, two of the most popular pieces of virtualization software.…

Read More