A nascent risk actor referred to as Crypt Ghouls has been linked to a set of cyber assaults focusing on Russian companies and authorities businesses with ransomware with the dual targets of disrupting enterprise operations and monetary acquire.
“The group beneath evaluation has a toolkit that features utilities reminiscent of Mimikatz, XenAllPasswordPro, PingCastle, Localtonet, resocks, AnyDesk, PsExec, and others,” Kaspersky mentioned. “As the ultimate payload, the group used the well-known ransomware LockBit 3.0 and Babuk.”
Victims of the malicious assaults span authorities businesses, in addition to mining, power, finance, and retail firms positioned in Russia.
The Russian cybersecurity vendor mentioned it was in a position to pinpoint the preliminary intrusion vector in solely two situations, with the risk actors leveraging a contractor’s login credentials to connect with the interior techniques by way of VPN.
The VPN connections are mentioned to have originated from IP addresses related to a Russian internet hosting supplier’s community and a contractor’s community, indicating an try and fly beneath the radar by weaponizing trusted relationships. It is believed that the contractor networks are breached by way of VPN companies or unpatched safety flaws.
The preliminary entry part is succeeded by way of NSSM and Localtonet utilities to take care of distant entry, with follow-on exploitation facilitated by instruments reminiscent of follows –
- XenAllPasswordPro to reap authentication knowledge
- CobInt backdoor
- Mimikatz to extract victims’ credentials
- dumper.ps1 to dump Kerberos tickets from the LSA cache
- MiniDump to extract login credentials from the reminiscence of lsass.exe
- cmd.exe to repeat credentials saved in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers
- PingCastle for community reconnaissance
- PAExec to run distant instructions
- AnyDesk and resocks SOCKS5 proxy for distant entry
The assaults finish with the encryption of system knowledge utilizing publicly accessible variations of LockBit 3.0 for Home windows and Babuk for Linux/ESXi, whereas additionally taking steps to encrypt knowledge current within the Recycle Bin to inhibit restoration.
“The attackers depart a ransom word with a hyperlink containing their ID within the Session messaging service for future contact,” Kaspersky mentioned. “They’d connect with the ESXi server by way of SSH, add Babuk, and provoke the encryption course of for the information inside the digital machines.”
Crypt Ghouls’ selection of instruments and infrastructure in these assaults overlaps with related campaigns performed by different teams focusing on Russia in current months, together with MorLock, BlackJack, Twelve, Shedding Zmiy (aka ExCobalt)
“Cybercriminals are leveraging compromised credentials, typically belonging to subcontractors, and standard open-source instruments,” the corporate mentioned. “The shared toolkit utilized in assaults on Russia makes it difficult to pinpoint the precise hacktivist teams concerned.”
“This means that the present actors usually are not solely sharing data but in addition their toolkits. All of this solely makes it harder to establish particular malicious actors behind the wave of assaults directed at Russian organizations.”
