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December 13, 2022

Five Cyber Security Predictions for 2023

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13
Dec 2022
This blog walks through five key trends we expect to observe in the cyber threat and cyber defense landscape in the next 12 months.

2022 Cyber Security Reflection

As 2022 draws to a close, we reflect on a cyber security landscape shaped by a partial return to office but with a wide acceptance of hybrid and flexible working, as well zero-trust principles becoming mainstream, increasingly complex digital landscapes, and a geopolitical situation marred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

These new challenges have been accompanied by more familiar threats vectors, with ransomware remaining rampant, and the growing commercial availability of offensive cyber tools leading a persistent stream of low-sophistication cyber crime becoming a thorn in the side of CISOs and security teams.

But the cyber landscape is constantly changing, and in what follows, we look at five key predictions, pulled from a range of analysts and experts across the Darktrace team, that we expect to see emerge in 2023.

1)  Attacker tradecraft centers on identity and MFA

It wasn’t just the recent Uber attack in which the victim’s Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) was compromised; at the core of the vast majority of cyber incidents is the theft and abuse of legitimate credentials. In the case of Uber, we saw that MFA can be defeated, and with Okta, that the MFA companies themselves become targets – potentially as a mechanism to reduce its effectiveness in other customer environments. 

Once considered a ‘silver bullet’ in the fight against credential stuffing, it hasn’t taken attackers long to find and exploit weaknesses in MFA and they will continue to do so in 2023. MFA will remain critical to basic cyber hygiene, but it will cease to be seen as a stand-alone ‘set and forget’ solution. Questions around accessibility and usability continue to dominate the MFA discussion and will only be amplified by increases in cloud and SaaS along with the dissolution of traditional on-prem networks. 

Today and in the future, MFA should be viewed as one component of a wider zero trust architecture, one where behavior-based analytics are central to understanding employee behavior and authenticating the actions taken using certain credentials. 

2) Continued ‘hacktivism’  

Hacktivism from non-state actors complicates cyber attribution and security strategies. The so-called ‘vigilante’ approach to cyber geopolitics is on the rise. Recent attacks launched by groups such as Killnet, though limited in their operational impact, have not failed in their aim to dominate global headlines in light of the Russo-Ukraine conflict, mounting concerns that these citizen-led operations could become more destructive or that states could use these groups as a deniable proxy.

Yet claims that ‘Russia’ launched these attacks can be misleading and add fuel to an already complicated political fire. Cyber attribution and deciphering the extent of state-level tasking is difficult, with blurred lines between state-aligned, state-involved and state-directed increasing the risk of escalation, collateral and misattribution. 

In 2023, ‘knowing thy enemy’ in cyber will be more complicated than ever before – but it is critical that organizations remain aware of the realities of cyber risk and cease to focus on the ‘boogie man’ of the internet that features in sensationalist reporting. Persistent, widely available, lower-sophistication malware and run-of-the-mill phishing campaigns statistically remain a greater global risk to corporations than the newest, most devious exploit kit or ransomware typically associated with APT groups. As it gets harder to name the enemy, we should see organizations moving away from the headlines and towards ensuring operational stability based on a bespoke understanding of their unique risk profile.

3) Crypto-jacking neglect gets dangerous

The hijacking of computer resources to mine cryptocurrencies is one of the fastest growing types of cyber-threats globally. These attacks are often overlooked as unthreatening ‘background noise’, but the reality is that any crypto-mining infection can turn into ransomware, data exfiltration or even an entry point for a human-driven attack at the snap of a finger. 

To achieve the scale of deployment that crypto-jackers are looking for, illegitimate network access must have been enabled by something relatively low-cost – a pervasive software vulnerability or default, weak or otherwise compromised credentials. This means that the basics aren't being done right somewhere, and if a crypto-jacker could do it, what's stopping a ransomware actor from following the same path? 

In 2023, crypto-jackers will get more savvy and we might start to see the detrimental effects of what is usually considered inevitable or negligible. Security leaders need to ask themselves: “How did this person get in?” – and shore up the easiest points of entry into their organization. 

Companies should not live with rogue software and hackers siphoning off their resources – particularly as rising energy prices will mean a greater financial loss is incurred as a result of illicit crypto-mining. 

4) Ransomware rushes to the cloud

Ransomware attacks are ever-evolving, and as cloud adoption and reliance continue to surge, attackers will continue to follow the data. In 2023, we are likely to see an increase in cloud-enabled data exfiltration in ransomware scenarios in lieu of encryption. 

Third-party supply chains offer those with criminal intent with more places to hide and targeting cloud providers instead of a single organization gives attackers more bang for their buck. Attackers may even get creative by threatening third-party cloud providers – a tactic which already impacted the education sector in early October when the Vice Society ransomware gang blackmailed Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), the second largest school district in the US, and published highly sensitive information, including bank details and psychological health reports of students on the darknet. 

5) Proactive security 

The recession requires CISOs to get frank with the board about proactive security measuers. Cyber security is a boardroom issue, but with growing economic uncertainty, organizations are being forced to make tough decisions as they plan 2023 budgets. 

Rising cyber insurance premiums are one thing, but as more underwriters introduce exclusions for cyber-attacks attributed to nation-states, organizations will struggle to see the value in such high premiums. Both insurance and compliance have long been seen as ways of ticking the ‘protection’ checkbox without achieving true operational assurance, and we need look no further than Colonial Pipeline to see that insurance cannot compensate for long-term business disruption and reputational damage. 

In 2023, CISOs will move beyond just insurance and checkbox compliance to opt for more proactive cyber security measures in order to maximize ROI in the face of budget cuts, shifting investment into tools and capabilities that continuously improve their cyber resilience. With human-driven means of ethical hacking, pen-testing and red teaming remaining scarce and expensive as a resource, CISOs will turn to AI-driven methods to proactively understand attack paths, augment red team efforts, harden environments and reduce attack surface vulnerability. Maturity models and end-to-end solutions will also be critical, as well as frank communication between CISOs and the board about the efficacy of continuously testing defenses in the background.

Inside the SOC
Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
Author
Toby Lewis
Head of Threat Analysis

Prior to joining Darktrace, Toby spent 15 years in the UK Government’s cyber security threats response unit, including as the UK National Cyber Security Centre’s Deputy Technical Director for Incident Management. He has specialist expertise in Security Operations, having worked across Cyber Threat Intelligence, Incident Management, and Threat Hunting. He has presented at several high-profile events, including the NCSC’s flagship conference, CyberUK, the SANS CyberThreat conference, and the Cheltenham Science Festival. He was a lead contributor to the first CyberFirst Girls Competition, championing greater gender diversity in STEM and cyber security. Toby is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and holds a Master’s in Engineering from the University of Bristol.

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January 16, 2025

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Reimagining Your SOC: How to Achieve Proactive Network Security

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Introduction: Challenges and solutions to SOC efficiency

For Security Operation Centers (SOCs), reliance on signature or rule-based tools – solutions that are always chasing the latest update to prevent only what is already known – creates an excess of false positives. SOC analysts are therefore overwhelmed by a high volume of context-lacking alerts, with human analysts able to address only about 10% due to time and resource constraints. This forces many teams to accept the risks of addressing only a fraction of the alerts while novel threats go completely missed.

74% of practitioners are already grappling with the impact of an AI-powered threat landscape, which amplifies challenges like tool sprawl, alert fatigue, and burnout. Thus, achieving a resilient network, where SOC teams can spend most of their time getting proactive and stopping threats before they occur, feels like an unrealistic goal as attacks are growing more frequent.

Despite advancements in security technology (advanced detection systems with AI, XDR tools, SIEM aggregators, etc...), practitioners are still facing the same issues of inefficiency in their SOC, stopping them from becoming proactive. How can they select security solutions that help them achieve a proactive state without dedicating more human hours and resources to managing and triaging alerts, tuning rules, investigating false positives, and creating reports?

To overcome these obstacles, organizations must leverage security technology that is able to augment and support their teams. This can happen in the following ways:

  1. Full visibility across the modern network expanding into hybrid environments
  2. Have tools that identifies and stops novel threats autonomously, without causing downtime
  3. Apply AI-led analysis to reduce time spent on manual triage and investigation

Your current solutions might be holding you back

Traditional cybersecurity point solutions are reliant on using global threat intelligence to pattern match, determine signatures, and consequently are chasing the latest update to prevent only what is known. This means that unknown threats will evade detection until a patient zero is identified. This legacy approach to threat detection means that at least one organization needs to be ‘patient zero’, or the first victim of a novel attack before it is formally identified.

Even the point solutions that claim to use AI to enhance threat detection rely on a combination of supervised machine learning, deep learning, and transformers to

train and inform their systems. This entails shipping your company’s data out to a large data lake housed somewhere in the cloud where it gets blended with attack data from thousands of other organizations. The resulting homogenized dataset gets used to train AI systems — yours and everyone else’s — to recognize patterns of attack based on previously encountered threats.

While using AI in this way reduces the workload of security teams who would traditionally input this data by hand, it emanates the same risk – namely, that AI systems trained on known threats cannot deal with the threats of tomorrow. Ultimately, it is the unknown threats that bring down an organization.

The promise and pitfalls of XDR in today's threat landscape

Enter Extended Detection and Response (XDR): a platform approach aimed at unifying threat detection across the digital environment. XDR was developed to address the limitations of traditional, fragmented tools by stitching together data across domains, providing SOC teams with a more cohesive, enterprise-wide view of threats. This unified approach allows for improved detection of suspicious activities that might otherwise be missed in siloed systems.

However, XDR solutions still face key challenges: they often depend heavily on human validation, which can aggravate the already alarmingly high alert fatigue security analysts experience, and they remain largely reactive, focusing on detecting and responding to threats rather than helping prevent them. Additionally, XDR frequently lacks full domain coverage, relying on EDR as a foundation and are insufficient in providing native NDR capabilities and visibility, leaving critical gaps that attackers can exploit. This is reflected in the current security market, with 57% of organizations reporting that they plan to integrate network security products into their current XDR toolset[1].

Why settling is risky and how to unlock SOC efficiency

The result of these shortcomings within the security solutions market is an acceptance of inevitable risk. From false positives driving the barrage of alerts, to the siloed tooling that requires manual integration, and the lack of multi-domain visibility requiring human intervention for business context, security teams have accepted that not all alerts can be triaged or investigated.

While prioritization and processes have improved, the SOC is operating under a model that is overrun with alerts that lack context, meaning that not all of them can be investigated because there is simply too much for humans to parse through. Thus, teams accept the risk of leaving many alerts uninvestigated, rather than finding a solution to eliminate that risk altogether.

Darktrace / NETWORK is designed for your Security Operations Center to eliminate alert triage with AI-led investigations , and rapidly detect and respond to known and unknown threats. This includes the ability to scale into other environments in your infrastructure including cloud, OT, and more.

Beyond global threat intelligence: Self-Learning AI enables novel threat detection & response

Darktrace does not rely on known malware signatures, external threat intelligence, historical attack data, nor does it rely on threat trained machine learning to identify threats.

Darktrace’s unique Self-learning AI deeply understands your business environment by analyzing trillions of real-time events that understands your normal ‘pattern of life’, unique to your business. By connecting isolated incidents across your business, including third party alerts and telemetry, Darktrace / NETWORK uses anomaly chains to identify deviations from normal activity.

The benefit to this is that when we are not predefining what we are looking for, we can spot new threats, allowing end users to identify both known threats and subtle, never-before-seen indicators of malicious activity that traditional solutions may miss if they are only looking at historical attack data.

AI-led investigations empower your SOC to prioritize what matters

Anomaly detection is often criticized for yielding high false positives, as it flags deviations from expected patterns that may not necessarily indicate a real threat or issues. However, Darktrace applies an investigation engine to automate alert triage and address alert fatigue.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst revolutionizes security operations by conducting continuous, full investigations across Darktrace and third-party alerts, transforming the alert triage process. Instead of addressing only a fraction of the thousands of daily alerts, Cyber AI Analyst automatically investigates every relevant alert, freeing up your team to focus on high-priority incidents and close security gaps.

Powered by advanced machine-learning techniques, including unsupervised learning, models trained by expert analysts, and tailored security language models, Cyber AI Analyst emulates human investigation skills, testing hypotheses, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. According to Darktrace Internal Research, Cyber AI Analyst typically provides a SOC with up to  50,000 additional hours of Level 2 analysis and written reporting annually, enriching security operations by producing high level incident alerts with full details so that human analysts can focus on Level 3 tasks.

Containing threats with Autonomous Response

Simply quarantining a device is rarely the best course of action - organizations need to be able to maintain normal operations in the face of threats and choose the right course of action. Different organizations also require tailored response functions because they have different standards and protocols across a variety of unique devices. Ultimately, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to automated response actions puts organizations at risk of disrupting business operations.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response tailors its actions to contain abnormal behavior across users and digital assets by understanding what is normal and stopping only what is not. Unlike blanket quarantines, it delivers a bespoke approach, blocking malicious activities that deviate from regular patterns while ensuring legitimate business operations remain uninterrupted.

Darktrace offers fully customizable response actions, seamlessly integrating with your workflows through hundreds of native integrations and an open API. It eliminates the need for costly development, natively disarming threats in seconds while extending capabilities with third-party tools like firewalls, EDR, SOAR, and ITSM solutions.

Unlocking a proactive state of security

Securing the network isn’t just about responding to incidents — it’s about being proactive, adaptive, and prepared for the unexpected. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) emphasizes this by highlighting the need for focused risk management, continuous incident response (IR) refinement, and seamless integration of these processes with your detection and response capabilities.

Despite advancements in security technology, achieving a proactive posture is still a challenge to overcome because SOC teams face inefficiencies from reliance on pattern-matching tools, which generate excessive false positives and leave many alerts unaddressed, while novel threats go undetected. If SOC teams are spending all their time investigating alerts then there is no time spent getting ahead of attacks.

Achieving proactive network resilience — a state where organizations can confidently address challenges at every stage of their security posture — requires strategically aligned solutions that work seamlessly together across the attack lifecycle.

References

1.       Market Guide for Extended Detection and Response, Gartner, 17thAugust 2023 - ID G00761828

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About the author
Mikey Anderson
Product Manager, Network Detection & Response

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January 15, 2025

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Ransomware

RansomHub Ransomware: Darktrace’s Investigation of the Newest Tool in ShadowSyndicate's Arsenal

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What is ShadowSyndicate?

ShadowSyndicate, also known as Infra Storm, is a threat actor reportedly active since July 2022, working with various ransomware groups and affiliates of ransomware programs, such as Quantum, Nokoyawa, and ALPHV. This threat actor employs tools like Cobalt Strike, Sliver, IcedID, and Matanbuchus malware in its attacks. ShadowSyndicate utilizes the same SSH fingerprint (1ca4cbac895fc3bd12417b77fc6ed31d) on many of their servers—85 as of September 2023. At least 52 of these servers have been linked to the Cobalt Strike command and control (C2) framework [1].

What is RansomHub?

First observed following the FBI's takedown of ALPHV/BlackCat in December 2023, RansomHub quickly gained notoriety as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operator. RansomHub capitalized on the law enforcement’s disruption of the LockBit group’s operations in February 2024 to market themselves to potential affiliates who had previously relied on LockBit’s encryptors. RansomHub's success can be largely attributed to their aggressive recruitment on underground forums, leading to the absorption of ex-ALPHV and ex-LockBit affiliates. They were one of the most active ransomware operators in 2024, with approximately 500 victims reported since February, according to their Dedicated Leak Site (DLS) [2].

ShadowSyndicate and RansomHub

External researchers have reported that ShadowSyndicate had as many as seven different ransomware families in their arsenal between July 2022, and September 2023. Now, ShadowSyndicate appears to have added RansomHub’s their formidable stockpile, becoming an affiliate of the RaaS provider [1].

Darktrace’s analysis of ShadowSyndicate across its customer base indicates that the group has been leveraging RansomHub ransomware in multiple attacks in September and October 2024. ShadowSyndicate likely shifted to using RansomHub due to the lucrative rates offered by this RaaS provider, with affiliates receiving up to 90% of the ransom—significantly higher than the general market rate of 70-80% [3].

In many instances where encryption was observed, ransom notes with the naming pattern “README_[a-zA-Z0-9]{6}.txt” were written to affected devices. The content of these ransom notes threatened to release stolen confidential data via RansomHub’s DLS unless a ransom was paid. During these attacks, data exfiltration activity to external endpoints using the SSH protocol was observed. The external endpoints to which the data was transferred were found to coincide with servers previously associated with ShadowSyndicate activity.

Darktrace’s coverage of ShadowSyndicate and RansomHub

Darktrace’s Threat Research team identified high-confidence indicators of compromise (IoCs) linked to the ShadowSyndicate group deploying RansomHub. The investigation revealed four separate incidents impacting Darktrace customers across various sectors, including education, manufacturing, and social services. In the investigated cases, multiple stages of the kill chain were observed, starting with initial internal reconnaissance and leading to eventual file encryption and data exfiltration.

Attack Overview

Timeline attack overview of ransomhub ransomware

Internal Reconnaissance

The first observed stage of ShadowSyndicate attacks involved devices making multiple internal connection attempts to other internal devices over key ports, suggesting network scanning and enumeration activity. In this initial phase of the attack, the threat actor gathers critical details and information by scanning the network for open ports that might be potentially exploitable. In cases observed by Darktrace affected devices were typically seen attempting to connect to other internal locations over TCP ports including 22, 445 and 3389.

C2 Communication and Data Exfiltration

In most of the RansomHub cases investigated by Darktrace, unusual connections to endpoints associated with Splashtop, a remote desktop access software, were observed briefly before outbound SSH connections were identified.

Following this, Darktrace detected outbound SSH connections to the external IP address 46.161.27[.]151 using WinSCP, an open-source SSH client for Windows used for secure file transfer. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) identified this IP address as malicious and associated it with ShadowSyndicate’s C2 infrastructure [4]. During connections to this IP, multiple gigabytes of data were exfiltrated from customer networks via SSH.

Data exfiltration attempts were consistent across investigated cases; however, the method of egress varied from one attack to another, as one would expect with a RaaS strain being employed by different affiliates. In addition to transfers to ShadowSyndicate’s infrastructure, threat actors were also observed transferring data to the cloud storage and file transfer service, MEGA, via HTTP connections using the ‘rclone’ user agent – a command-line program used to manage files on cloud storage. In another case, data exfiltration activity occurred over port 443, utilizing SSL connections.

Lateral Movement

In investigated incidents, lateral movement activity began shortly after C2 communications were established. In one case, Darktrace identified the unusual use of a new administrative credential which was quickly followed up with multiple suspicious executable file writes to other internal devices on the network.

The filenames for this executable followed the regex naming convention “[a-zA-Z]{6}.exe”, with two observed examples being “bWqQUx.exe” and “sdtMfs.exe”.

Cyber AI Analyst Investigation Process for the SMB Writes of Suspicious Files to Multiple Devices' incident.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst Investigation Process for the SMB Writes of Suspicious Files to Multiple Devices' incident.

Additionally, script files such as “Defeat-Defender2.bat”, “Share.bat”, and “def.bat” were also seen written over SMB, suggesting that threat actors were trying to evade network defenses and detection by antivirus software like Microsoft Defender.

File Encryption

Among the three cases where file encryption activity was observed, file names were changed by adding an extension following the regex format “.[a-zA-Z0-9]{6}”. Ransom notes with a similar naming convention, “README_[a-zA-Z0-9]{6}.txt”, were written to each share. While the content of the ransom notes differed slightly in each case, most contained similar text. Clear indicators in the body of the ransom notes pointed to the use of RansomHub ransomware in these attacks. As is increasingly the case, threat actors employed double extortion tactics, threatening to leak confidential data if the ransom was not paid. Like most ransomware, RansomHub included TOR site links for communication between its "customer service team" and the target.

Figure 2: The graph shows the behavior of a device with encryption activity, using the “SMB Sustained Mimetype Conversion” and “Unusual Activity Events” metrics over three weeks.

Since Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability was not enabled during the compromise, the ransomware attack succeeded in its objective. However, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst provided comprehensive coverage of the kill chain, enabling the customer to quickly identify affected devices and initiate remediation.

Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst panel showing the critical incidents of the affected device from one of the cases investigated.

In lieu of Autonomous Response being active on the networks, Darktrace was able to suggest a variety of manual response actions intended to contain the compromise and prevent further malicious activity. Had Autonomous Response been enabled at the time of the attack, these actions would have been quickly applied without any human interaction, potentially halting the ransomware attack earlier in the kill chain.

Figure 4: A list of suggested Autonomous Response actions on the affected devices."

Conclusion

The Darktrace Threat Research team has noted a surge in attacks by the ShadowSyndicate group using RansomHub’s RaaS of late. RaaS has become increasingly popular across the threat landscape due to its ease of access to malware and script execution. As more individual threat actors adopt RaaS, security teams are struggling to defend against the increasing number of opportunistic attacks.

For customers subscribed to Darktrace’s Security Operations Center (SOC) services, the Analyst team promptly investigated detections of the aforementioned unusual and anomalous activities in the initial infection phases. Multiple alerts were raised via Darktrace’s Managed Threat Detection to warn customers of active ransomware incidents. By emphasizing anomaly-based detection and response, Darktrace can effectively identify devices affected by ransomware and take action against emerging activity, minimizing disruption and impact on customer networks.

Credit to Kwa Qing Hong (Senior Cyber Analyst and Deputy Analyst Team Lead, Singapore) and Signe Zahark (Principal Cyber Analyst, Japan)

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

Antigena Models / Autonomous Response:

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena Network Scan Block

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena SMB Enumeration Block

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena Internal Anomalous File Activity

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena Large Data Volume Outbound Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Breaches Over Time Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Controlled and Model Breach

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Significant Server Anomaly Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Server Block

Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious Activity Block

Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious File Pattern of Life Block

Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena File then New Outbound Block


Network Reconnaissance:

Device / Network Scan

Device / ICMP Address Scan

Device / RDP Scan
Device / Anomalous LDAP Root Searches
Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration
Device / Spike in LDAP Activity

C2:

Enhanced Monitoring - Device / Lateral Movement and C2 Activity

Enhanced Monitoring - Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise

Enhanced Monitoring - Compromise / Suspicious File and C2

Compliance / Remote Management Tool On Server

Anomalous Connection / Outbound SSH to Unusual Port


External Data Transfer:

Enhanced Monitoring - Unusual Activity / Enhanced Unusual External Data Transfer

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data Transfer

Anomalous Connection / Data Sent to Rare Domain

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoint

Compliance / SSH to Rare External Destination

Anomalous Connection / Application Protocol on Uncommon Port

Enhanced Monitoring - Anomalous File / Numeric File Download

Anomalous File / New User Agent Followed By Numeric File Download

Anomalous Server Activity / Outgoing from Server

Device / Large Number of Connections to New Endpoints

Anomalous Connection / Multiple HTTP POSTs to Rare Hostname

Anomalous Connection / Uncommon 1 GiB Outbound

Lateral Movement:

User / New Admin Credentials on Server

Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control

Anomalous Connection / High Volume of New or Uncommon Service Control

Anomalous File / Internal / Executable Uploaded to DC

Anomalous Connection / Suspicious Activity On High Risk Device

File Encryption:

Compliance / SMB Drive Write

Anomalous File / Internal / Additional Extension Appended to SMB File

Compromise / Ransomware / Possible Ransom Note Write

Anomalous Connection / Suspicious Read Write Ratio

List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

IoC - Type - Description + Confidence

83.97.73[.]198 - IP - Data exfiltration endpoint

108.181.182[.]143 - IP - Data exfiltration endpoint

46.161.27[.]151 - IP - Data exfiltration endpoint

185.65.212[.]164 - IP - Data exfiltration endpoint

66[.]203.125.21 - IP - MEGA endpoint used for data exfiltration

89[.]44.168.207 - IP - MEGA endpoint used for data exfiltration

185[.]206.24.31 - IP - MEGA endpoint used for data exfiltration

31[.]216.148.33 - IP - MEGA endpoint used for data exfiltration

104.226.39[.]18 - IP - C2 endpoint

103.253.40[.]87 - IP - C2 endpoint

*.relay.splashtop[.]com - Hostname - C2 & data exfiltration endpoint

gfs***n***.userstorage.mega[.]co.nz - Hostname - MEGA endpoint used for data exfiltration

w.api.mega[.]co.nz - Hostname - MEGA endpoint used for data exfiltration

ams-rb9a-ss.ams.efscloud[.]net - Hostname - Data exfiltration endpoint

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Tactic - Technqiue

RECONNAISSANCE – T1592.004 Client Configurations

RECONNAISSANCE – T1590.005 IP Addresses

RECONNAISSANCE – T1595.001 Scanning IP Blocks

RECONNAISSANCE – T1595.002 Vulnerability Scanning

DISCOVERY – T1046 Network Service Scanning

DISCOVERY – T1018 Remote System Discovery

DISCOVERY – T1083 File and Directory Discovery
INITIAL ACCESS - T1189 Drive-by Compromise

INITIAL ACCESS - T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application

COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1001 Data Obfuscation

COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1071 Application Layer Protocol

COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1071.001 Web Protocols

COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1573.001 Symmetric Cryptography

COMMAND AND CONTROL - T1571 Non-Standard Port

DEFENSE EVASION – T1078 Valid Accounts

DEFENSE EVASION – T1550.002 Pass the Hash

LATERAL MOVEMENT - T1021.004 SSH

LATERAL MOVEMENT – T1080 Taint Shared Content

LATERAL MOVEMENT – T1570 Lateral Tool Transfer

LATERAL MOVEMENT – T1021.002 SMB/Windows Admin Shares

COLLECTION - T1185 Man in the Browser

EXFILTRATION - T1041 Exfiltration Over C2 Channel

EXFILTRATION - T1567.002 Exfiltration to Cloud Storage

EXFILTRATION - T1029 Scheduled Transfer

IMPACT – T1486 Data Encrypted for Impact

References

1.     https://www.group-ib.com/blog/shadowsyndicate-raas/

2.     https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/366617096/ESET-RansomHub-most-active-ransomware-group-in-H2-2024

3.     https://cyberint.com/blog/research/ransomhub-the-new-kid-on-the-block-to-know/

4.     https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/AA24-131A.stix_.xml

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About the author
Qing Hong Kwa
Senior Cyber Analyst and Deputy Analyst Team Lead, Singapore
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