The U.S. Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) says the cybercrime gang behind the Royal and BlackSuit ransomware operations had breached tons of of U.S. firms earlier than being taken down final month.
Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI), DHS’s principal investigative arm, which took down the group’s infrastructure in cooperation with worldwide regulation enforcement companions, added that the cybercriminals additionally collected over $370 million from their victims.
“Since 2022, the Royal and BlackSuit ransomware teams have compromised over 450 recognized victims in the US, together with entities within the healthcare, schooling, public security, power and authorities sectors,” the HSI stated in a Thursday press launch.
“Mixed, the teams have acquired greater than $370 million in ransom funds, based mostly on present-day valuations of cryptocurrency. The ransomware schemes used double-extortion techniques — encrypting victims’ programs whereas threatening to leak stolen information to additional coerce cost.”
The U.S. Division of Justice confirmed on July 24 that regulation enforcement seized BlackSuit’s darkish net extortion domains, changing the contents of the gang’s leak websites with seizure banners as a part of a joint worldwide motion codenamed Operation Checkmate.
The cybercrime group behind these two ransomware operations surfaced as Quantum ransomware in January 2022 and was believed to be a successor to the infamous Conti cybercrime syndicate. Whereas they initially deployed encryptors from different teams (like ALPHV/BlackCat), they later developed their very own Zeon encryptor, rebranding as Royal ransomware in September 2022.
In June 2023, after focusing on the Metropolis of Dallas, Texas, and testing a brand new encryptor referred to as BlackSuit, the Royal ransomware gang switched to the BlackSuit model.
CISA and the FBI confirmed in a November 2023 joint advisory that Royal and BlackSuit shared related techniques, linking the Royal ransomware gang to assaults focusing on over 350 organizations worldwide since September 2022, which resulted in ransom calls for exceeding $275 million.
An August 2024 joint advisory from the 2 businesses later confirmed that the Royal ransomware had rebranded as BlackSuit and demanded over $500 million from victims since its emergence greater than two years earlier than.
Chaos ransomware rebrand
Since BlackSuit’s infrastructure was dismantled, the Cisco Talos menace intelligence analysis group has discovered proof suggesting the BlackSuit ransomware gang will now doubtless rebrand itself once more as Chaos ransomware.
The cybercriminals’ new ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation has already been linked to double extortion assaults, the place they use voice-based social engineering for entry and deploy an encryptor that targets each native and distant storage for optimum harm.
“Talos believes the brand new Chaos ransomware is unrelated to earlier Chaos builder-generated variants, because the group makes use of the identical title to create confusion,” the researchers stated.
“Talos assesses with average confidence that the brand new Chaos ransomware group is both a rebranding of the BlackSuit (Royal) ransomware or operated by a few of its former members.
“This evaluation is predicated on the similarities in TTPs, together with encryption instructions, the theme and construction of the ransom be aware, and the usage of LOLbins and RMM instruments of their assaults.”
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