A new version of LockBit 3.0 (LockBit Black) was released in June 2022, along with a new leak site and the first Bug Bounty program on the dark web.

You may also be interested in reading: Conti vs. LockBit 2.0 – a Trend Micro Research in Brief.

The encryption process includes adding the extension “HLJkNskOq” or “19MqZqZ0s” to each file and changing the icons of the locked files to the icon of the “.ico” file that was removed by the LockBit sample to trigger the infection.

According to a report by Trend Micro researchers, the ransomware then displays a ransom note that mentions Elon Musk and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). LockBit 3.0 then changes the wallpaper on the victim’s computer to report a ransomware attack.

Much of LockBit’s similarity to BlackMatter comes from the repetition of privilege escalation and data collection to identify APIs needed to terminate other processes, and the use of anti-debugging and multi-threading techniques to prevent parsing. In addition, LockBit 3.0 checks the interface language of the victim’s computer to avoid compromising systems related to the countries of the former USSR.

The findings come after LockBit programs became the most active ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups in 2022. The latest attack on the RaaS model was carried out on the Italian tax office. According to the Palo Alto Networks 2022 Unit 42 report, out of 600 incidents between May 2021 and April 2022, the ransomware family accounted for 14% of intrusions, second only to Conti at 22%.

The development also highlights the continued success of the RaaS business model, lowering the barrier to entry for hackers and expanding the opportunitiesm of ransomware.

According to the Check Point Cyberattack Trends Report Q2 2022, on average, 1 in 40 organizations are attacked weekly, up 59% from 2021. Latin America saw the largest increase in attacks, with 1 in 23 organizations attacked each week, up 43% from 2021. Asia also saw growth of 33% (1 in 17 organizations).

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Let me remind you that the unusual ransomware ALPHV (aka BlackCat and BC.a Noberus) written in Rust was discovered by researchers at the end of last year. Even then, experts noted that the creator of ALPHV was probably previously a member of the well-known hacker group REvil, and the new malware is a “very complex” encryptor.

Back at the end of 2021, after the appearance of ALPHV, a representative of the LockBit hack group stated that ALPHV is just a rebranding of the BlackMatter/DarkSide malware.

Now, these statements have been confirmed by the ALPHV representative himself:

Although BlackCat operators claim in interviews that they were only BlackMatter/DarkSide partners running their own extortion business, some experts do not believe this. For example, in response to the statements of hackers, Bleeping Computer quotes Emsisoft analyst Brett Callow, who is sure that BlackMatter simply replaced the development team after Emsisoft found a vulnerability in their malware that allowed victims to restore files for free.

Bleeping Computer journalists also note that hackers do not seem to learn from their mistakes. The fact is that the responsibility for the recent attacks on the German companies Oiltanking and Mabanaft, engaged in the transportation and storage of oil and petroleum products, lies with the operators of the BlackCat/ALPHV encryptor. These attacks once again affected the fuel supply chain and caused a lot of problems.

This is quite ironic, considering that the DarkSide group was forced to cease its activities earlier precisely after the attack on the largest pipeline operator in the United States, Colonial Pipeline, as the incident provoked interruptions in the supply of fuel and drew too much unnecessary attention to the hackers.

About the same thing happened with the BlackMatter ransomware, which experts almost immediately called the rebranding of DarkSide – law enforcement agencies confiscated the group’s servers and forced it to stop operating again.

Now, after attacking Oiltanking and Mabanaft, the faction may again be under attack for the same reason. However, in an interview with Recorded Future, the hackers said that they cannot control targets of their partner’s attacks, and try to block those who break the rules.

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It is emphasized that this reward can be obtained for any information about the heads of the Darkside, who occupy key positions in the faction. If the informant provides information that will lead to the arrest of DarkSide partners (in any country) who help hackers to carry out attacks, this information can get up to $5,000,000.

The US authorities said they are offering such a large reward due to an attack on the largest pipeline operator in the United States, the fuel transportation company Colonial Pipeline. Let me remind you that we talked about this attack in detail, because it was this incident that forced the authorities to introduce an emergency regime in a number of states and became the very straw that could break the back of a camel: the attention of law enforcement agencies to ransomware increased, and on hacker forums they rushed to ban advertising of ransomware.

After the attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, which drew too much attention from the authorities to the hackers, DarkSide ceased its activities, claiming that it had lost access to some of its accounts and servers. However, experts soon reported that the new BlackMatter ransomware could be considered the “successor” of the DarkSide malware, and the group clearly simply carried out a “rebranding”.

However, we also wrote that after REvil shut down, members of the hack group DarkSide hastily moved $7 million.

The aforementioned BlackMatter also stopped working last week, citing pressure from local authorities and some recent news. Representatives of the group did not explain exactly what news were discussed, but the statement came after a series of major arrests in recent weeks.

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The group announced it was “shutting down” on November 1, 2021, in the backend part of its darknet site, which is usually used by attackers’ partners.

Representatives of the group did not explain what kind of pressure they are talking about, but this statement was published after a number of major events that have occurred in recent weeks.

First, Microsoft and Gemini Advisory recently linked the FIN7 criminal group (believed to be the developer of the DarkSide and BlackMatter malware) with the fake information security company Bastion Secure, which was looking for and hiring researchers.

Secondly, last week it was revealed that Emsisoft secretly created a decryptor for BlackMatter, which was provided victims so that they did not pay ransoms, and this considerably declined hackers’ profits.

Third, the New York Times reported over the weekend that Russia and the United States have begun closer cooperation to combat Russian-based cybercriminals and extortion groups. Let me remind you that FIN7 is a Russian-speaking group, and it is believed that it operates from Russia.

Fourth, the REvil ransomware recently shut down (for the second time this year), which, according to media reports, has been taken seriously by law enforcement agencies.

Fifth, what is happening may be associated with a large-scale operation by law enforcement agencies, during which 12 people responsible for 1,800 extortion attacks were recently detained.

It is also worth remembering that this is not the first time that hackers have stopped their activities. For example, the BlackMatter ransomware is considered the “successor” of the DarkSide malware, which stopped working in May of this year after the scandalous attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, which drew too close attention of the authorities to hackers.

On Twitter, the founder of the well-known information security conferences Black Hat and DEF CON, Jeff Moss, notes that ransomware is half a political issue, and law enforcement agencies usually know the identities of most of the malware operators, but they cannot pursue these hack groups from due to Russia’s unwillingness to cooperate.

According to BlackMatter, it can be assumed that the situation has changed, although many cybersecurity experts already predict a new “rebranding” of the group and its early return.

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Moreover, with each new transaction, a smaller amount is transferred, which makes it difficult to track money.

CEO and co-founder of Profero first noticed the transfer process, and announced on Twitter that 107 bitcoins (about $7 million) from the group’s wallet had moved to another wallet. He emphasized that the money is clearly controlled by the hackers themselves, since the secret services usually simply move the seized assets to a new wallet under their control, and do not try to break the funds into smaller pieces.

As the blockchain analysis company Elliptic reported a little later, the DarkSide cryptocurrency passes through different wallets, and in the process the amount has already decreased from 107.8 BTC to 38.1 BTC. This is a typical money laundering scheme that makes it difficult to track funds and it helps criminals to convert cryptocurrency to fiat. According to Elliptic, this process is still ongoing, and small amounts have already been transferred to well-known exchanges.

Interestingly, DarkSide funds were set in motion shortly after the media reported that law enforcement was behind the cessation of another well-known hack group, REvil, by attacking the criminals’ infrastructure.

The fact is that DarkSide has also received a lot of attention, especially last summer when it hacked one of the largest pipeline operators in the United States, Colonial Pipeline. This incident forced the American authorities to introduce an emergency regime in a number of states and became the very straw that could break the back of a camel: the attention of law enforcement agencies to ransomware increased, and on hacker forums they rushed to ban advertising of ransomware altogether.

A week after the attack, and the government’s much unwelcome attention to hackers, DarkSide announced it would cease operations. Then the group claimed that it had lost control of some servers and cryptocurrency wallets (that is, its own money). However, in July, the hackers rebranded themselves by launching a new infrastructure and malware called BlackMatter.

It looks like now, after what happened to REvil, hackers want to make sure they don’t lose their funds a second time. Moreover, a few days earlier, the American authorities issued a warning about BlackMatter’s activities, stating that the ransomware had already attacked “several critical US infrastructures.”

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The hackers demanded $5.9 million for the decryptor, and said the amount would rise to $ 11.8 million if the ransom was not paid within five days. Also, in case of non-payment, the attackers threaten to disclose the data stolen from the victims (more than 1000 GB were allegedly stolen).

Bleeping Computer reports that NEW Cooperative representatives have already confirmed the attack and said they have shut down their systems so far to contain the spread of the attack. Currently, the threat has been “successfully localized”, and NEW Cooperative is working to investigate the situation together with law enforcement agencies and information security experts.

Based on the group’s website, the attackers claim to have stolen the source code of the soilmap.com project, research and development results, confidential employee information, financial documents, and the KeePass password manager database.

Interestingly, judging by the screenshots of NEW Cooperative correspondence and ransomware posted on Twitter, the victims asked the hackers why they were attacked at all, because NEW Cooperative is considered part of a critical infrastructure, and the attack could lead to disruptions in the supply of grain, pork and chicken.

It is worth recalling that in the summer this year, the DarkSide ransomware attacked the largest US pipeline operator, the Colonial Pipeline, engaged in the transportation of fuel. A result of this attack, due to which an emergency regime was introduced in a number of states, became the very straw that could break the back of a camel: the attention of law enforcement agencies to ransomware increased, and hacker forums were rushed to ban advertising of ransomware. Since then, many ransomware have strictly prohibited their “partners” from attacking critical infrastructure, medical facilities, governments of several countries, and so on.

And while BlackMatter has similar bans, the attackers responded that NEW Cooperative “does not fall under these rules,” and threatened to double the ransom if the company did not change its approach to negotiations.

The BlackMatter representative answered this very succinctly:

It should also be said that many information security specialists believe that BlackMatter is a revived DarkSide, that is, a ransomware created by the same authors. Because of this, the cybersecurity community now jokes that by attacking NEW Cooperative, DarkSide operators again made the wrong choice.

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In particular, the analysts of Recorded Future wrote that the new group could be associated with DarkSide, which ceased operations in May of this year, after the scandalous attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, which attracted too close attention of the authorities to hackers.

Several companies have already suffered from BlackMatter, and hackers demanded a ransom from them in the amount of $ 3 to 4 million, Bleeping Computer now reports. One victim has already paid the cybercriminals $ 4 million and received an ESXi decryptor for Windows and Linux from them.

The journalists showed this tool to the information security expert and the technical director of the Emisosft company Fabian Vosar. He confirmed that BlackMatter uses the same unique encryption methods that the DarkSide group used in their attacks (including the special Salsa20 matrix, unique to this group).

The publication also notes that if BlackMatter is just a “rebranding” of DarkSide, this explains some of the limitations listed on the hackers’ site. So, among other things, the group reports that it is not going to attack “the oil and gas industry (pipelines, oil refineries).” Let me remind you that it was the attack on the operator of the Colonial Pipeline that led to the “closure” of DarkSide.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of this week, an expert analyst of Recorded Future, interviewed a representative of the new extortionist group. BlackMatter denies being involved with DarkSide; instead, the hackers say they were only inspired by “the work of colleagues.”

When Smilyanets directly asked if representatives of the group could confirm that their infrastructure is based on DarkSide, they replied:

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Researchers say the group is currently recruiting “partners” through announcements on hacker forums Exploit and XSS.

Although any advertising related to ransomware has been banned on these sites since May 2021, BlackMatter members do not advertise Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), but advertisements for finding “initial access brokers”, that is, people who have access to compromised corporate networks.

According to the announcement, BlackMatter is only interested in working with brokers who can provide access to the networks of large companies, whose income is $100 million per year or more. Such a network must have between 500 and 15,000 hosts and must be located in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia.

Hackers write that they are willing to pay up to $100,000 for exclusive access to any of the suitable networks.

The members of the group boast that they can encrypt data in different versions of operating systems and architectures. Including: Windows (via SafeMode), Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS), VMWare ESXi 5+, as well as NAS Synology, OpenMediaVault, FreeNAS and TrueNAS.

Like most modern ransomware, the BlackMater group has already launched its own data leak site, where hackers intend to publish information stolen from victims if the hacked company does not agree to pay the ransom for decrypting files. So far, the resource is empty, but BlackMatter announced themselves only this week and have not attacked anyone yet.

The BlackMatter website lists targets that the group is not going to attack (in case of accidental infection, the data of the victims will be decrypted for free). The list includes:

• hospitals;
• critical infrastructure facilities (nuclear power plants, power plants, water treatment plants);
• oil and gas industry (pipelines, oil refineries);
• defense industry;
• non-profit organizations;
• government sector.

Recorded Future analysts believe that the new group may be linked to other notorious ransomware, DarkSide, who ceased operations in May this year after the scandalous attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, which drew too close attention of the authorities to the hackers. However, while the researchers do not make final conclusions and continue to investigate.

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