The Romanian company Bitdefender has published a universal utility for decrypting data affected by REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware attacks.
The tool works for any data encrypted before July 13, 2021.
However, the company has so far refused to provide any details, citing an ongoing investigation.
Let me remind you that on July 13 of this year the entire REvil infrastructure went offline without explanation. Then it was a question of shutting down an entire network of regular and darknet sites that were used to negotiate a ransom, drain data stolen from victims, as well as the internal infrastructure of the ransomware.
Not long before that, in early July 2021, REvil operators carried out a large-scale attack on the customers of the well-known MSP solution provider Kaseya. As a result, the cybercriminals deployed the ransomware in thousands of corporate networks. In addition, shortly before the attack on customers, Kaseya REvil hit the front pages of many publications as it attacked JBS, the world’s largest supplier of beef and poultry, as well as the second largest producer of pork. The company operates in the USA, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and so on, serving clients from 190 countries around the world.
As a result, US President Joe Biden in a telephone conversation called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the attacks of ransomware hackers operating from the territory of the Russian Federation. Biden said that if Russia does not take action after that, the United States will be forced to take it on its own.
Shortly thereafter, REvil went offline for several months, and only returned to service on September 7, 2021. According to information security companies, REvil operators re-activated their old sites, created new profiles on the forums.
At the same time, Kaseya somehow obtained a universal key to decrypt its customers’ data. Then some experts suggested that Russian law enforcement officers received the decryption key from the attackers and handed it over to the FBI as a gesture of goodwill.
Now Bleeping Computer writes that until September 9 there was no evidence of new attacks and that REvil has fully resumed its activity. However, late last week, someone uploaded a new REvil sample to VirusTotal, dated September 4th. And shortly thereafter, the hackers published screenshots of the data stolen from the new victim on their website on the darknet.