Head Fake: Tackling Disruptive Ransomware Attacks
Threat Research
Within the past several months, FireEye has observed financially-motivated threat actors employ tactics that focus on disrupting business processes by deploying ransomware in mass throughout a victim’s environment. Understanding that normal business processes are critical to organizational success, these ransomware campaigns have been accompanied with multi-million dollar ransom amounts. In this post, we’ll provide a technical examination of one recent campaign that stems back to a technique that we initially reported on in April 2018.
Between May and September 2019, FireEye responded to multiple incidents involving a financially-motivated threat actor who leveraged compromised web infrastructure to establish an initial foothold in victim environments. This activity bared consistencies with a fake browser update campaign first identified in April 2018 – now tracked by FireEye as FakeUpdates. In this newer campaign, the threat actors leveraged victim systems to deploy malware such as Dridex or NetSupport, and multiple post-exploitation frameworks. The threat actors’ ultimate goal in some cases was to ransom systems in mass with BitPaymer or DoppelPaymer ransomware (see Figure 1).
Hugh Taylor
Hugh Taylor is a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM). In addition to editing Journal of Cyber Policy, he writes about cybersecurity, compliance and enterprise technology for such clients as Microsoft, IBM, SAP, HPE, Oracle, Google and Advanced Micro Devices. Prior to launching his freelance writing career, he served in executive roles at Microsoft, IBM and several venture-backed technology startups.