When Splunk told me we would have a “breach holiday” theme for the summer, I didn’t think it would be quite so on the nose… For those of you who have been working on this Kaseya REvil Ransomware incident over the weekend, I salute you. We’ve been doing the same. As usual, my team here at Splunk likes to make sure that we have some actionable material before posting a blog, and this time is no different.

In the world of cybersecurity, there are no holidays and days off as proven by the ransomware attacks that began during the Fourth of July weekend, impacting users of the Kaseya VSA remote management and monitoring software.

The ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation behind REvil have become one of the most prolific and successful threat groups since the ransomware first appeared in May 2019. REvil has been primarily used to target Windows systems. However, new samples have been identified targeting Linux systems. AT&T Alien Labs™ is closely monitoring the ransomware landscape and has already identified four of these samples in the wild during the last month, after receiving a tip from MalwareHuntingTeam.

One of the worst things about ransomware attacks isn’t just the mayhem they cause as your data is encrypted by criminals and your business is put on hold — it’s not knowing when they’ll happen. But what if you had some advance notice about the next cyberattack before it hit? What if you could find out if your data was up for bid on the dark web?

Attackers have long used phishing emails with malicious Microsoft Office documents, often hosted in popular cloud apps like Box and Amazon S3 to increase the chances of a successful lure. The techniques being used with Office documents are continuing to evolve. In August – September of 2020, we analyzed samples that used advanced techniques like: In January 2021, we examined samples that use obfuscation and embedded XSL scripts to download payloads.