Ransomware groups have generated so much damage that the United States Federal government has made it a top priority to thwart such efforts including, hosting a major international summit on the topic, setting up a ransomware task force and repeatedly urging organizations to improve their cyber resilience.

In Part 1 of our BlackByte ransomware analysis, we covered the execution flow of the first stage JScript launcher, how we extracted BlackByte binary from the second stage DLL, the inner workings of the ransomware, and our decryptor code. In this blog, we will detail how we analyzed and de-obfuscated the JScript launcher, BlackByte’s code, and strings.

Please click here for Part 2 UPDATE 19.October.2021 - Based on some reactions and responses to our BlackByte analysis, and specifically, the included decryptor, we wanted to provide an update and some clarification. First off, we’ve updated the decryptor on github to include two new files. One is the compiled build of the executable to make the tool more accessible and the second is a sample encrypted file “spider.png.blackbyte” that can be used to test the decryptor.

A document sent to the US Congress published by Motherboard, the technology section of Vice, confirms that CIA personnel, the NSA and other members of the US Intelligence Community widely use ad blockers in their Internet browsers. This measure was adopted to remove the distraction of adverts on web pages for employees, but it provides additional protection against malware.

The FBI recently published a warning stating that ransomware gang OnePercent Group has been attacking companies in the US since November 2020. This gang of cybercriminals targets individuals within an organization with social engineering tactics designed to fool them into opening a document from a ZIP file attached to an email. Ransomware is then downloaded and the breach is underway.

Google has released a report taking a close look at the more than 80 million ransomware samples uploaded to its VirusTotal service in the last year and a half. Each day, approximately 150,000 ransomware samples were analysed by the free VirusTotal service after being submitted by suspicious computer users, and shared with the security community to enhance their threat intelligence and improve anti-virus products.

The discovery of the Pegasus spyware demonstrated that no system is 100% secure or inaccessible, especially when it was discovered that this malicious program mainly affected iPhones.

Back in early June, the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a fact sheet discussing the rising threat of ransomware to operational technology (OT) assets. This development raises several questions. Why is ransomware a threat to OT environments? And what can organizations do to protect their OT assets against ransomware?