Unit 42 researchers have observed an increase in BlackSuit ransomware activity beginning in March 2024 that suggests a ramp up of operations. This threat emerged as a rebrand of Royal ransomware, which occurred in May 2023. Unit 42 tracks the group behind this threat as Ignoble Scorpius.
Since the rebrand, Unit 42 has observed at least 93 victims globally, a quarter of which were in the construction and manufacturing industries. The group describes themselves as an “extortioner named BlackSuit” and claims to reverse file encryption for “quite a small compensation essentially.” Although the group states the compensation is small, Unit 42 has observed that, on average, the initial ransom demand is about equal to 1.6% of the victim organization’s annual revenue.
Read more…
Source: Trend Micro
Related:
- US federal payroll agency hacked using SolarWinds software flaw
February 2, 2021
The FBI has discovered that the National Finance Center (NFC), a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) federal payroll agency, was compromised by exploiting a SolarWinds Orion software flaw, according to a Reuters report. NFC provides human resources and payroll services to roughly 170 federal agencies and over 650,000 federal employees since 1973. The software vulnerability used to ...
- Ransomware gangs now have industrial targets in their sights
February 2, 2021
Ransomware attacks are a potential danger for any organisation, with ransomware variants including Conti, Egregor, Maze and many others still successfully compromising victims across all industries – but there are some industries that criminal gangs are targeting more than others. The ransomware attacks are successful because many organisations can’t afford for their network to be out ...
- Agent Tesla ramps up its game in bypassing security walls, attacks endpoint protection
February 2, 2021
Agent Tesla malware variants are now using new techniques to try and eradicate endpoint antivirus security. On Tuesday, Sophos researchers said that two new variants of the Remote Access Trojan (RAT) are targeting Microsoft Anti-Malware Software Interface (AMSI), scanning and analysis software designed to prevent malware infections from taking hold. Agent Tesla operators will now attempt to ...
- Minnesota: Netgain ransomware incident impacts local governments
February 2, 2021
The ransomware incident that Netgain, a provider of managed IT services, had late last year rippled onto its customers. Now, Ramsey County, Minnesota, is informing clients of the Family Health Division program that the hackers may have accessed personal data. The government of Ramsey County learned about the potential breach on December 2, 2020, when Netagin ...
- Trickbot malware now maps victims’ networks using Masscan
February 2, 2021
The Trickbot malware has been upgraded with a network reconnaissance module designed to survey local networks after infecting a victim’s computer. This new module, dubbed masrv, uses the open-source masscan tool, a mass port scanner with its own TCP/IP stack and capable of scanning large swaths of the Internet in a matter of minutes. Trickbot uses the ...
- Finding and Decoding Multi-Step Obfuscated Malware
February 2, 2021
Recently, in the process of a threat investigation, Trend Micro researchers found an interesting event. A process (nslookup.exe) that tried to connect to a malicious URL that was already blocked by trend Micro solutions. We could have stopped at this point, but searching for the root cause is part of managed detection and response (MDR) — ...