Headline
RansomHub Ransomware Group Targets 210 Victims Across Critical Sectors
Threat actors linked to the RansomHub ransomware group encrypted and exfiltrated data from at least 210 victims since its inception in February 2024, the U.S. government said. The victims span various sectors, including water and wastewater, information technology, government services and facilities, healthcare and public health, emergency services, food and agriculture, financial services,
Threat actors linked to the RansomHub ransomware group encrypted and exfiltrated data from at least 210 victims since its inception in February 2024, the U.S. government said.
The victims span various sectors, including water and wastewater, information technology, government services and facilities, healthcare and public health, emergency services, food and agriculture, financial services, commercial facilities, critical manufacturing, transportation, and communications critical infrastructure.
“RansomHub is a ransomware-as-a-service variant—formerly known as Cyclops and Knight—that has established itself as an efficient and successful service model (recently attracting high-profile affiliates from other prominent variants such as LockBit and ALPHV),” government agencies said.
A ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) variant that’s a descendant of Cyclops and Knight, the e-crime operation has attracted high-profile affiliates from other prominent variants such as LockBit and ALPHV (aka BlackCat) following a recent wave of law enforcement actions.
ZeroFox, in an analysis published late last month, said RansomHub’s activity as a proportion of all ransomware activity observed by the cybersecurity vendor is on an upward trajectory, accounting for approximately 2% of all attacks in Q1 2024, 5.1% in Q2, and 14.2% so far in Q3.
“Approximately 34% of RansomHub attacks have targeted organizations in Europe, compared to 25% across the threat landscape,” the company noted.
The group is known to employ the double extortion model to exfiltrate data and encrypt systems in order to extort victims, who are urged to contact the operators via a unique .onion URL. Targeted companies who refuse to acquiesce to the ransom demand have their information published on the data leak site for anywhere between three to 90 days.
Initial access to victim environments is facilitated by exploiting known security vulnerabilities in Apache ActiveMQ (CVE-2023-46604), Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server (CVE-2023-22515), Citrix ADC (CVE-2023-3519), F5 BIG-IP (CVE-2023-46747), Fortinet FortiOS (CVE-2023-27997), and Fortinet FortiClientEMS (CVE-2023-48788) devices, among others.
This step is succeeded by affiliates conducting reconnaissance and network scanning using programs like AngryIPScanner, Nmap, and other living-off-the-land (LotL) methods. RansomHub attacks further involve disarming antivirus software using custom tools to fly under the radar.
“Following initial access, RansomHub affiliates created user accounts for persistence, re-enabled disabled accounts, and used Mimikatz on Windows systems to gather credentials [T1003] and escalate privileges to SYSTEM,” the U.S. government advisory reads.
“Affiliates then moved laterally inside the network through methods including Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), PsExec, AnyDesk, Connectwise, N-Able, Cobalt Strike, Metasploit, or other widely used command-and-control (C2) methods.”
Another notable aspect of RansomHub attacks is the use of intermittent encryption to speed up the process, with data exfiltration observed through tools such as PuTTY, Amazon AWS S3 buckets, HTTP POST requests, WinSCP, Rclone, Cobalt Strike, Metasploit, and other methods.
The development comes as Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 unpacked the tactics associated with the ShinyHunters ransomware, which it tracks as Bling Libra, highlighting its shift to extorting victims as opposed to their traditional tactic of selling or publishing stolen data. The threat actor first came to light in 2020.
“The group acquires legitimate credentials, sourced from public repositories, to gain initial access to an organization’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment,” security researchers Margaret Zimmermann and Chandni Vaya said.
“While the permissions associated with the compromised credentials limited the impact of the breach, Bling Libra infiltrated the organization’s AWS environment and conducted reconnaissance operations. The threat actor group used tools such as the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Browser and WinSCP to gather information on S3 bucket configurations, access S3 objects and delete data.”
It also follows a significant evolution in ransomware attacks, which have moved beyond file encryption to employ complex, multi-faceted extortion strategies, even employing triple and quadruple extortion schemes, per SOCRadar.
“Triple extortion ups the ante, threatening additional means of disruption beyond encryption and exfiltration,” the company said.
“This might involve conducting a DDoS attack against the victim’s systems or extending direct threats to the victim’s clients, suppliers, or other associates to wreak further operational and reputational damage on those ultimately targeted in the extortion scheme.”
Quadruple extortion ups the ante by contacting third-parties that have business relationships with the victims and extorting them, or threatening victims to expose data from third-parties to heap further pressure on a victim to pay up.
The lucrative nature of RaaS models has fueled a surge in new ransomware variants like Allarich, Cronus, CyberVolk, Datablack, DeathGrip, Hawk Eye, and Insom. It has also led Iranian nation-state actors to collaborate with known groups like NoEscape, RansomHouse, and BlackCat in return for a cut of the illicit proceeds.
Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.
Related news
Threat actors have been observed abusing Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) Transfer Acceleration feature as part of ransomware attacks designed to exfiltrate victim data and upload them to S3 buckets under their control. "Attempts were made to disguise the Golang ransomware as the notorious LockBit ransomware," Trend Micro researchers Jaromir Horejsi and Nitesh Surana said. "However, such is
As the Akira ransomware group continues to evolve its operations, Talos has the latest research on the group's attack chain, targeted verticals, and potential future TTPs.
Japanese organizations are the target of a Chinese nation-state threat actor that leverages malware families like LODEINFO and NOOPDOOR to harvest sensitive information from compromised hosts while stealthily remaining under the radar in some cases for a time period ranging from two to three years. Israeli cybersecurity company Cybereason is tracking the campaign under the name Cuckoo Spear,
The Andariel group is targeting critical defense, aerospace, nuclear, and engineering companies for data theft, the FBI, NSA, and others said.
An RCE vulnerability that affects the Web scripting language on Windows systems is easy to exploit and can provide a broad attack surface.
A remote SQL injection vulnerability exists in FortiNet FortiClient EMS (Endpoint Management Server) versions 7.2.0 through 7.2.2 and 7.0.1 through 7.0.10. FortiClient EMS serves as an endpoint management solution tailored for enterprises, offering a centralized platform for overseeing enrolled endpoints. The SQL injection vulnerability is due to user controller strings which can be sent directly into database queries. FcmDaemon.exe is the main service responsible for communicating with enrolled clients. By default it listens on port 8013 and communicates with FCTDas.exe which is responsible for translating requests and sending them to the database. In the message header of a specific request sent between the two services, the FCTUID parameter is vulnerable to SQL injection. It can be used to enable the xp_cmdshell which can then be used to obtain unauthenticated remote code execution in the context of NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. Upgrading to either 7.2.3, 7.0.11 or above is recommended by Fo...
Fortinet FortiOS suffers from an out of bounds write vulnerability. Affected includes Fortinet FortiOS versions 7.4.0 through 7.4.2, 7.2.0 through 7.2.6, 7.0.0 through 7.0.13, 6.4.0 through 6.4.14, 6.2.0 through 6.2.15, 6.0.0 through 6.0.17, FortiProxy versions 7.4.0 through 7.4.2, 7.2.0 through 7.2.8, 7.0.0 through 7.0.14, 2.0.0 through 2.0.13, 1.2.0 through 1.2.13, 1.1.0 through 1.1.6, and 1.0.0 through 1.0.7.
Fortinet has disclosed a new critical security flaw in FortiOS SSL VPN that it said is likely being exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, CVE-2024-21762 (CVSS score: 9.6), allows for the execution of arbitrary code and commands. "A out-of-bounds write vulnerability [CWE-787] in FortiOS may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code or command via specially
Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "notable increase" in threat actor activity actively exploiting a now-patched flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to deliver the Godzilla web shell on compromised hosts. "The web shells are concealed within an unknown binary format and are designed to evade security and signature-based scanners," Trustwave said. "Notably, despite the binary's unknown file
Organizations in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) sector are in the crosshairs of an Iranian threat actor as part of a campaign designed to deliver a never-before-seen backdoor called FalseFont. The findings come from Microsoft, which is tracking the activity under its weather-themed moniker Peach Sandstorm (formerly Holmium), which is also known as APT33, Elfin, and Refined Kitten. "
By Deeba Ahmed The ActiveMQ flaw has been patched, but despite this, numerous threat actors continue to exploit it. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Cybercriminals Exploit ActiveMQ Flaw to Spread GoTitan Botnet, PrCtrl Rat
The recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting Apache ActiveMQ is being actively exploited by threat actors to distribute a new Go-based botnet called GoTitan as well as a .NET program known as PrCtrl Rat that's capable of remotely commandeering the infected hosts. The attacks involve the exploitation of a remote code execution bug (CVE-2023-46604, CVSS score: 10.0) that has been
The Kinsing threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in vulnerable Apache ActiveMQ servers to infect Linux systems with cryptocurrency miners and rootkits. "Once Kinsing infects a system, it deploys a cryptocurrency mining script that exploits the host's resources to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, resulting in significant damage to the infrastructure and a negative
In September, two high-profile casino breaches taught us about the nuances of the RaaS affiliate landscape, the asymmetric dangers of phishing, and of two starkly different approaches to ransomware negotiation.
Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated a new technique that exploits a critical security flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to achieve arbitrary code execution in memory. Tracked as CVE-2023-46604 (CVSS score: 10.0), the vulnerability is a remote code execution bug that could permit a threat actor to run arbitrary shell commands. It was patched by Apache in ActiveMQ versions 5.15.16, 5.16.7, 5.17.6,
This Metasploit module exploits a flaw in F5's BIG-IP Traffic Management User Interface (TMU) that enables an external, unauthenticated attacker to create an administrative user. Once the user is created, the module uses the new account to execute a command payload. Both the exploit and check methods automatically delete any temporary accounts that are created.
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a stealthy backdoor named Effluence that's deployed following the successful exploitation of a recently disclosed security flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server. "The malware acts as a persistent backdoor and is not remediated by applying patches to Confluence," Aon's Stroz Friedberg Incident Response Services said in an analysis published
Multiple ransomware groups have begun to actively exploit recently disclosed flaws in Atlassian Confluence and Apache ActiveMQ. Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 said it observed the exploitation of CVE-2023-22518 and CVE-2023-22515 in multiple customer environments, some of which have been leveraged for the deployment of Cerber (aka C3RB3R) ransomware. Both vulnerabilities are critical, allowing threat
A remote code execution vulnerability in Apache ActiveMQ is being used by the HelloKItty ransomware group.
F5 is warning of active abuse of a critical security flaw in BIG-IP less than a week after its public disclosure that could result in the execution of arbitrary system commands as part of an exploit chain. Tracked as CVE-2023-46747 (CVSS score: 9.8), the vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the BIG-IP system through the management port to achieve code execution
F5 has warned customers about a critical vulnerability impacting BIG-IP that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution.
Atlassian has warned of a critical security flaw in Confluence Data Center and Server that could result in "significant data loss if exploited by an unauthenticated attacker." Tracked as CVE-2023-22518, the vulnerability is rated 9.1 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scoring system. It has been described as an instance of "improper authorization vulnerability." All versions of Confluence Data
Apache ActiveMQ is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution.The vulnerability may allow a remote attacker with network access to a broker to run arbitrary shell commands by manipulating serialized class types in the OpenWire protocol to cause the broker to instantiate any class on the classpath. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 5.15.16, 5.16.7, 5.17.6, or 5.18.3, which fixes this issue.
F5 has alerted customers of a critical security vulnerability impacting BIG-IP that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. The issue, rooted in the configuration utility component, has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2023-46747, and carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10. "This vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the BIG-IP
Undisclosed requests may bypass configuration utility authentication, allowing an attacker with network access to the BIG-IP system through the management port and/or self IP addresses to execute arbitrary system commands. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated
This Metasploit module exploits an improper input validation issue in Atlassian Confluence, allowing arbitrary HTTP parameters to be translated into getter/setter sequences via the XWorks2 middleware and in turn allows for Java objects to be modified at run time. The exploit will create a new administrator user and upload a malicious plugins to get arbitrary code execution. All versions of Confluence between 8.0.0 through to 8.3.2, 8.4.0 through to 8.4.2, and 8.5.0 through to 8.5.1 are affected.
The latest threat to Citrix NetScaler, CVE-2023-4966, was exploited as a zero-day bug for months before a patch was issued. Researchers expect exploitation efforts to surge.
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Microsoft Threat Intelligence has revealed that it has been tracking the active exploitation of a vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence software since September 14, 2023. (Read more...) The post Update now! Atlassian Confluence vulnerability is being actively exploited appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
Organizations should brace for mass exploitation of CVE-2023-22515, an uber-critical security bug that opens the door to crippling supply chain attacks on downstream victims.
Microsoft has linked the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server to a nation-state actor it tracks as Storm-0062 (aka DarkShadow or Oro0lxy). The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the vulnerability since September 14, 2023. "CVE-2023-22515 is a critical privilege escalation vulnerability in
A recently disclosed critical flaw in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway devices is being exploited by threat actors to conduct a credential harvesting campaign. IBM X-Force, which uncovered the activity last month, said adversaries exploited "CVE-2023-3519 to attack unpatched NetScaler Gateways to insert a malicious script into the HTML content of the authentication web page to capture user
Atlassian has released fixes to contain an actively exploited critical zero-day flaw impacting publicly accessible Confluence Data Center and Server instances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-22515, is remotely exploitable and allows external attackers to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and access Confluence servers. It does not impact Confluence versions prior to
Atlassian has been made aware of an issue reported by a handful of customers where external attackers may have exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in publicly accessible Confluence Data Center and Server instances to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and access Confluence instances. Atlassian Cloud sites are not affected by this vulnerability. If your Confluence site is accessed via an atlassian.net domain, it is hosted by Atlassian and is not vulnerable to this issue.
Atlassian has been made aware of an issue reported by a handful of customers where external attackers may have exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in publicly accessible Confluence Data Center and Server instances to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and access Confluence instances. Atlassian Cloud sites are not affected by this vulnerability. If your Confluence site is accessed via an atlassian.net domain, it is hosted by Atlassian and is not vulnerable to this issue. For more details, please review the linked advisory on this CVE.
Unpatched Citrix NetScaler systems exposed to the internet are being targeted by unknown threat actors in what's suspected to be a ransomware attack. Cybersecurity company Sophos is tracking the activity cluster under the moniker STAC4663. Attack chains involve the exploitation of CVE-2023-3519, a critical code injection vulnerability impacting NetScaler ADC and Gateway servers that could
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a critical security flaw in Citrix ShareFile storage zones controller to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active in-the-wild exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2023-24489 (CVSS score: 9.8), the shortcoming has been described as an improper access control bug that, if successfully exploited
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Tags: Citrix Tags: NetScalers Tags: Germany Tags: CVE-2023-3519 Tags: Fox-IT Tags: DIVD Researchers have found almost 2000 backdoored Citrix NetScalers, many of which were patched after the backdoor in the form of a web shell was dropped. (Read more...) The post Citrix NetScalers backdoored in widespread exploitation campaign appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
Nearly 2,000 Citrix NetScaler instances have been compromised with a backdoor by weaponizing a recently disclosed critical security vulnerability as part of a large-scale attack. "An adversary appears to have exploited CVE-2023-3519 in an automated fashion, placing web shells on vulnerable NetScalers to gain persistent access," NCC Group said in an advisory released Tuesday. "The adversary can
Plus: Mozilla fixes two high-severity bugs in Firefox, Citrix fixes a flaw that was used to attack a US-based critical infrastructure organization, and Oracle patches over 500 vulnerabilities.
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Tags: Citrix Tags: NetScaler Tags: CVE-2023-3519 Tags: web shell A critical unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Citrix NetScaler Gateway is being actively exploited (Read more...) The post CISA: You've got two weeks to patch Citrix NetScaler vulnerability CVE-2023-3519 appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory on Thursday warning that the newly disclosed critical security flaw in Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway devices is being abused to drop web shells on vulnerable systems. "In June 2023, threat actors exploited this vulnerability as a zero-day to drop a web shell on a critical
Citrix is alerting users of a critical security flaw in NetScaler Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2023-3519 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to a case of code injection that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. It impacts the following versions - NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway 13.1
By Deeba Ahmed The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10, is a critical security bug that affects Fortinet appliances and has been actively exploited in the wild. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Critical RCE Vulnerability Puts 330,000 Fortinet Firewalls at Risk
No less than 330000 FortiGate firewalls are still unpatched and vulnerable to CVE-2023-27997, a critical security flaw affecting Fortinet devices that have come under active exploitation in the wild. Cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox, in a report published last week, said that out of nearly 490,000 Fortinet SSL-VPN interfaces exposed on the internet, about 69 percent remain unpatched. CVE-2023-27997
The U.S. government agency in charge of improving the nation's cybersecurity posture is ordering all federal civilian agencies to take new measures to restrict access to Internet-exposed networking equipment. The directive comes amid a surge in attacks targeting previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used security and networking appliances.
Users urged to apply updates to FortiOS SSL-VPN after attackers may have leveraged a recently discovered vulnerability in attacks against government, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure organizations.
A heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability [CWE-122] in FortiOS version 7.2.4 and below, version 7.0.11 and below, version 6.4.12 and below, version 6.0.16 and below and FortiProxy version 7.2.3 and below, version 7.0.9 and below, version 2.0.12 and below, version 1.2 all versions, version 1.1 all versions SSL-VPN may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code or commands via specifically crafted requests.
Fortinet on Monday disclosed that a newly patched critical flaw impacting FortiOS and FortiProxy may have been "exploited in a limited number of cases" in attacks targeting government, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure sectors. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-27997 (CVSS score: 9.2), concerns a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in FortiOS and FortiProxy SSL-VPN that could
Fortinet has released patches to address a critical security flaw in its FortiGate firewalls that could be abused by a threat actor to achieve remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-27997, is "reachable pre-authentication, on every SSL VPN appliance," Lexfo Security researcher Charles Fol, who discovered and reported the flaw, said in a tweet over the weekend. Details