Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

Massive Cerber Campaigns Hit Multiple Countries

The Cerber ransomware is an international threat and has infected users all around the world, but researchers at Check Point observed campaigns over the past two months that focused mainly on three geographies, namely the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

The Cerber ransomware is an international threat and has infected users all around the world, but researchers at Check Point observed campaigns over the past two months that focused mainly on three geographies, namely the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

Among the numerous ransomware families that emerged since the beginning of this year, only a few managed to grab enough market share to become prevalent threats, and Cerber is one of them. Spotted for the first time in late February, the ransomware stood up in the crowd because it used a VBScript that caused the infected computer to “speak” to the victim.

Since February, Cerber has received several updates, with researchers at Invincea reporting in mid-May that the malware might have been also leveraged in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Researchers noticed strange network behavior associated with the ransomware, which was calling out a large address range: from 85.93.0.0 to 85.93.63.255, and concluded that it might have been packed with new capabilities.

In early June, Invincea researchers warned that Cerber operators started using a server-side “malware factory” to evade detection. Basically, the server that delivered the payload in an observed infection campaign was generating a new hash for it every 15 seconds, thus able to trick signature-based antimalware solutions.

At the time, researchers also revealed that Cerber was most active in the United States, which accounted for almost 50 percent of infections, but that Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Malaysia, and Germany were also targeted countries.

Now, Check Point researchers say that while victims in the United States are indeed the targets of choice for Cerber, the ransomware is also a great threat to users in Turkey and the United Kingdom. The US accounts for 41% of infections, followed by Turkey at 15% and the UK at 9%, with Israel and Taiwan rounding up top 5 most affected countries, at 4% each.

Moreover, the security researchers observed two spikes in Cerber’s activity, one in April and another one in May, and that both were highly productive for the malware’s operators. While the U.S., Turkey and the UK were the preferred targets in these campaigns, users in other countries also fell victims to the ransomware, researchers say.

Cerber launches its attack by using Windows binaries without any parameters, and does that by injecting code into explorer.exe and calling a couple of applications. It also loads a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) used by multiple programs and, after the encryption starts, it erases shadow copies to prevent file recovery. The ransomware uses AES-265 and RSA encryption and also tampers the boot sequence, making sure that the user cannot recover the encrypted files.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

After successfully encrypting the victim’s files, the ransomware deletes itself from the infected machine and uses Notepad and Google Chrome to display the ransom note. Moreover, the malware launches a watchdog that prevents uninstall attempts, thus ensuring persistency. Cerber also starts a “network search, calling a very long series of IP addresses mostly located in France.”

According to Check Point security researchers, we will see more spikes in Cerber’s activity. The ransomware is distributed via phishing emails that contain malicious attachments, and users are advised to avoid opening emails that come from unknown sources, to stay protected.

Over the past couple of weeks, Cerber has been the malicious payload in around 10 percent of the Neutrino and Magnitude exploit kits traffic. The ransomware was associated with EKs before, yet its presence in infection campaigns is more dominant now, when Angler and Nuclear are gone and Neutrino, RIG, and Magnitude have taken over the EK landscape.

Related: ZCryptor Ransomware Spreads via Removable Drives

Related: Ransomware-as-a-Service Lets Anyone be a Cybercriminal

Written By

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Understand how to go beyond effectively communicating new security strategies and recommendations.

Register

Join us for an in depth exploration of the critical nature of software and vendor supply chain security issues with a focus on understanding how attacks against identity infrastructure come with major cascading effects.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Malware & Threats

The NSA and FBI warn that a Chinese state-sponsored APT called BlackTech is hacking into network edge devices and using firmware implants to silently...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Malware & Threats

Unpatched and unprotected VMware ESXi servers worldwide have been targeted in a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerability patched in 2021.

Cyberwarfare

An engineer recruited by intelligence services reportedly used a water pump to deliver Stuxnet, which reportedly cost $1-2 billion to develop.

Malware & Threats

Apple’s cat-and-mouse struggles with zero-day exploits on its flagship iOS platform is showing no signs of slowing down.

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.