Recorded Future, a cybersecurity firm, has revealed that a ransomware attack named “Thanos” has been promoted on a number of darknet hacking forums since February 2020.
On June 10, it has been reported that Recorded Future’s Insikt Group uncovered the new “ransomware-as-a-service” attack.
However, “ransomware-as-a-service” methods consist of allowing external hackers to use the ransomware to attack their targets in exchange for adhering to a revenue-share scheme with the developers by splitting profits of 60% – 70% approximately.
Lindsay Kaye, the Director of Operational Outcomes of Insikt Group at Recorded Future, explained:
“Thanos does not have any particularly sophisticated or novel characteristics that we were able to identify, but the remarkable feature that Insikt Group found and that spurred this research is the malware’s use of the RIPlace technique in its file encryption process. Previously, the RIPlace technique was only observed in the proof of concept published by Nyotron, but the Thanos ransomware demonstrates an example of a threat actor productizing the technique for use in malware.”
It has been analyzed that the Thanos ransomware builder allows the operator to customize the software’s ransom note, as they can modify the text to ask for any cryptocurrency of their choosing, not just Bitcoin (BTC).
Recorded Future reports that Thanos ransomware uses a particular encryption method https://t.co/rw3EYg8GzY — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) June 11, 2020
Though it is an advertised possibility, Kaye said that so far, they have not observed the use of Monero with the ransomware.
Thus, Kaye advised:
“Ransomware attacks, if successful, can be hugely debilitating to companies. Because Thanos by default uses an AES encryption key that is generated at runtime, without the attacker’s private key, recovery of the files is impossible. That said, to minimize the risk of an attack using Thanos, organizations should continue to employ information security best practices for mitigating the threats posed by ransomware.”
Source: Cointelegraph | Image: CBS News