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BLACKSUIT CLAIMS DOZENS OF VICTIMS WITH CAREFULLY CURATED RANSOMWARE

Researchers went in-depth on an attack by the threat group, which mainly targets
US companies in the education and industrial goods sectors, specifically to
maximize financial gain.

Elizabeth Montalbano, Contributing Writer

May 29, 2024

4 Min Read
Source: William Scott via Alamy Stock Photo


The BlackSuit ransomware gang has leaked stolen data from attacks against 53
organizations spanning a year.

Researchers from ReliaQuest analyzed in-depth an attack that took place in April
from the ransomware group, which has been active since May 2023. The group —
believed to be spun off from the Royal ransomware gang — primarily targets
US-based companies in critical sectors such as education and industrial goods,
choosing targets carefully to maximize financial gain, according to a blog post
published yesterday.



"This targeting pattern strongly suggests a financial motivation with a focus on
critical sectors that either have smaller cybersecurity budgets or a low
tolerance for downtime, thereby increasing the likelihood of a successful attack
or a speedy ransom payment," according to the Reliaquest Threat Research Team
post.

BlackSuit uses a double-extortion method and other tactics, techniques, and
procedures (TTPs) that reflect a maturity atypical of a group that's only been
around for a year. This reflects its origin in Royal, which in turn was
comprised of members of the formidable and now-defunct Conti ransomware gang.



"The group's pedigree, varied malware deployment methods, and advanced
encryption and system-recovery processes indicate that BlackSuit's operators are
likely experienced and technically proficient," the team wrote.

The attack investigated by ReliaQuest shows BlackSuit using an array of of
"straightforward TTPs" that begin including Kerberoasting and leveraging PsExec
for lateral movment, FTP for exfiltration, brute forcing, and the ultimate
deployment of ransomware from a virtual machine.




IN-DEPTH ATTACK SEQUENCE

The BlackSuit attack observed in April began when a threat actor gained VPN
access to the customer's environment through a valid account, likely using
credentials that were brute-forced or accessed in a password dump. The VPN was
an easy target for initial access because it was "a non-primary VPN gateway at a
disaster recovery site and was not configured to enforce multifactor
authentication or certificate requirements," the team noted.

Over the next week, the attacker moved laterally across several Windows
workstations, primarily using PsExec, a remote administration tool that was
already in use in the customer environment.



After a three-day pause in the action — likely because the attack was done by an
initial-access broker who then sold BlackSuit or one of its affiliates access to
the environment — the attack resumed with the attacker authenticating to a
Windows server and then downloading a custom payload that allowed loading of
Rubeus, a toolkit for Kerberos abuse, into PowerShell.

It then compromised more than 20 users through Kerberoasting — a
post-exploitation attack that extracts service account credential hashes from
Active Directory for offline cracking, according to security firm Qomplx — as
well as an additional account via AS-REP roasting.

The attacker used an unmonitored Windows server to initiate FTP connections to
an external IP address to send more than 100 gigabytes of data over the next six
hours, then set up a malicious Windows VM likely used "to obfuscate the
ransomware deployment from endpoint security tools," according to Reliaquest
researchers.

"The threat actor used PsExec from their VM to copy the ransomware payload —
which was hosted on a network share — to hundreds of hosts through Server
Message Block (SMB)," the team wrote. "Following this, WMIC was used to load the
ransomware payload as a library, thus executing the encrypter."



Once the attack was detected, the impacted organization took immediate action to
roll passwords across the domain and isolate the compromised site from other
global locations to limit the impact. It ultimately focused on remediation
through hash banning and host isolation using endpoint security solutions,
according to Reliaquest.

The customer worked to detect potential data leakage and monitor its digital
assets, as well as deployed "various detection rules … to strengthen the
organization's defensive posture, including those to identify malware,
suspicious DNS requests, and lateral movement activities," according to the
post.


MITIGATING VARIOUS RANSOMWARE ATTACK STAGES

ReliaQuest revealed several mitigation tactics that organizations can take for
each of the attack steps it observed. For instance, to avoid the initial
misconfiguration of the VPN that allowed for initial access, the team suggested
that organizations use centralized change management and version control to
deploy network device configurations instead of managing devices individually.

This "will cut down on misconfigurations, and, when paired with an automated
inventory mapping solution, will help to ensure there are no hidden
misconfigured or legacy devices," according to the post.

Organizations also can better track lateral movements by monitoring Windows
event logs and deploying a robust endpoint detection and response (EDR) tool,
neither of which the customer did.

"Many organizations choose not to forward Windows logs from workstations because
of ingest restrictions on existing SIEM licenses," the team noted. "It's
important for organizations to be aware of the risks when making this decision
and to compensate if possible."

While Kerberoasting is difficult to mitigate entirely, "because anyone can
request a ticket-granting service (TGS) ticket for any service principal name
(SPN) to crack offline," the researchers noted that organizations can take steps
"to put the burden on the adversary and make it an unattractive option."



One of those is to disable the ability to request weak encryption types to
strengthen passwords, "which is often more straightforward than retroactively
enforcing password complexity," the ReliaQuest team suggested.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Elizabeth Montalbano, Contributing Writer



Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing
mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of
expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived
and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York
City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In
her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing
music, yoga, and cooking.


See more from Elizabeth Montalbano, Contributing Writer
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