ShrinkLocker: Turning BitLocker into ransomware


The original purpose of BitLocker is to address the risks of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen, or improperly decommissioned devices.

Nonetheless, threat actors have found out that this mechanism can be repurposed for malicious ends to great effect. In that incident, the attackers were able to deploy and run an advanced VBS script that took advantage of BitLocker for unauthorized file encryption. We spotted this script and its modified versions in Mexico, Indonesia, and Jordan. In the sections below, we analyze in detail the malicious code obtained during our incident response effort and provide tips for mitigating this kind of threat.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Gremlin Stealer: New Stealer on Sale in Underground Forum

    April 29, 2025

    Unit 42 researchers have identified new information-stealing malware written in C#, called Gremlin Stealer. This stealer’s authors have actively advertised it on a Telegram group since mid-March 2025. This information-stealing malware exfiltrates data from its victims and uploads this information to its web server for publication. It can capture data from browsers, the clipboard and the ...

  • Outlaw cybergang attacking targets worldwide

    April 29, 2025

    In a recent incident response case in Brazil, we dealt with a relatively simple, yet very effective threat focused on Linux environments. Outlaw (also known as “Dota”) is a Perl-based crypto mining botnet that typically takes advantage of weak or default SSH credentials for its operations. Previous research described Outlaw samples obtained from honeypots. In this ...

  • M&S: WFH staff locked out of systems amid cyber attack fallout

    April 28, 2025

    M&S has shut remote-working employees out of some of its IT systems as it struggles to recover from the fallout of a cyberattack last week. The high street giant closed some of the programmes that staff use to log into the internal IT systems when working outside of the office, The Times reported. Cybersecurity experts said ...

  • Android malware turns phones into malicious tap-to-pay machines

    April 24, 2025

    Got an Android phone? Got a tap-to-pay card? Then you’re like millions of other users now at risk from a new form of cybercrime – malware that can read your credit or debit card and hand its data over to an attacker. A newly discovered malicious program effectively turns Android phones into malicious tap machines that ...

  • M&S: FTSE 100 giant battling cyber attack

    April 22, 2025

    M&S has revealed it has been battling what it has described as a “cyber incident” over the past few days. The FTSE 100 giant said that it’s made some “minor, temporary changes to our store operations to protect customers and the business” and “we are sorry for any inconvenience experienced.” M&S confirmed that it is working ...

  • FOG Ransomware Spread by Cybercriminals Claiming Ties to DOGE

    April 21, 2025

    During trend Micro researchers monitoring of the ransomware threat landscape, they discovered samples with infection chain characteristics and payloads that can be attributed to FOG ransomware. A total of nine samples were uploaded to VirusTotal between March 27 and April 2, which the researchers recently discovered were multiple ransomware binaries with .flocked extension and readme.txt notes. ...