The threat actors behind the LockBit ransomware operation have resurfaced on the dark web using new infrastructure, days after an international law enforcement exercise seized control of its servers.

To that end, the notorious group has moved its data leak portal to a new .onion address on the TOR network, listing 12 new victims as of writing.

The administrator behind LockBit, in a lengthy follow-up message, said some of their websites were confiscated by most likely exploiting a critical PHP flaw tracked as CVE-2023-3824, acknowledging that they didn’t update PHP due to “personal negligence and irresponsibility.”

“I realize that it may not have been this CVE, but something else like 0-day for PHP, but I can’t be 100% sure, because the version installed on my servers was already known to have a known vulnerability, so this is most likely how the victims’ admin and chat panel servers and the blog server were accessed,” they noted.

They also claimed the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “hacked” their infrastructure because of a ransomware attack on Fulton County in January and the “stolen documents contain a lot of interesting things and Donald Trump’s court cases that could affect the upcoming U.S. election.”

They also called for attacking the “.gov sector” more often, while also stating that the server from which the authorities obtained more than 1,000 decryption keys held almost 20,000 decryptors, most of which were protected and accounted for about half of the total number of decryptors generated since 2019.

The group further went on to add that the nicknames of the affiliates have “nothing to do with their real nicknames on forums and even nicknames in messengers.”

That’s not all. The post also attempted to discredit law enforcement agencies, claiming the real “Bassterlord” has not been identified, and that the FBI actions are “aimed at destroying the reputation of my affiliate program.”

“Why did it take 4 days to recover? Because I had to edit the source code for the latest version of PHP, as there was incompatibility,” they said.

“I will stop being lazy and make it so that absolutely every build loker will be with maximum protection, now there will be no automatic trial decrypt, all trial decrypts and the issuance of decryptors will be made only in manual mode. Thus in the possible next attack, the FBI will not be able to get a single decryptor for free.”

Russia Arrests Three SugarLocker Members

The development comes as Russian law enforcement officials have arrested three individuals, including Aleksandr Nenadkevichite Ermakov (aka blade_runner, GustaveDore, or JimJones), in connection with the SugarLocker ransomware group.

“The attackers worked under the guise of a legitimate IT firm Shtazi-IT, which offers services for the development of landing pages, mobile applications, scripts, parsers, and online stores,” Russian cybersecurity firm F.A.C.C.T. said. “The company openly posted ads for hiring new employees.”

The operators have also been accused of developing custom malware, creating phishing sites for online stores, and driving user traffic to fraudulent schemes popular in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations.

SugarLocker first appeared in early 2021 and later began to be offered under the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, leasing its malware to other partners under an affiliate program to breach targets and deploy the ransomware payload.

Nearly three-fourths of the ransom proceeds go to the affiliates, a figure that jumps to 90% if the payment exceeds $5 million. The cybercrime gang’s links to Shtazi-IT were previously disclosed by Intel 471 last month.

The arrest of Ermakov is notable, as it comes in the wake of Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. imposing financial sanctions against him for his alleged role in the 2022 ransomware attack against health insurance provider Medibank.

The ransomware attack, which took place in late October 2022 and attributed to the now-defunct REvil ransomware crew, led to the unauthorized access of approximately 9.7 million of its current and former customers.

The stolen information included names, dates of birth, Medicare numbers, and sensitive medical information, including records on mental health, sexual health, and drug use. Some of these records also found their way to the dark web.

It also follows a report from news agency TASS, which revealed that a 49-year-old Russian national is set to face trial on charges of carrying out a cyber attack on technological control systems that left 38 settlements of the Vologda without power.

LockBitSupp, the individual(s) behind the persona representing the LockBit ransomware service on cybercrime forums such as Exploit and XSS, “has engaged with law enforcement,” authorities said.

The development comes following the takedown of the prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation as part of a coordinated international operation codenamed Cronos. Over 14,000 rogue accounts on third-party services like Mega, Protonmail, and Tutanota used by the criminals have been shuttered.

“We know who he is. We know where he lives. We know how much he is worth. LockbitSupp has engaged with law enforcement,” according to a message posted on the now-seized (and offline) dark web data leak site.

The move has been interpreted by long-term watchers of LockBit as an attempt to create suspicion and sow the seeds of distrust among affiliates, ultimately undermining trust in the group within the cybercrime ecosystem.

According to research published by Analyst1 in August 2023, there is evidence to suggest that at least three different people have operated the “LockBit” and “LockBitSupp” accounts, one of them being the gang’s leader itself.

However, speaking to malware research group VX-Underground, LockBit stated “they did not believe law enforcement know his/her/their identities.” They also raised the bounty it offered to anyone who could message them their real names to $20 million. It’s worth noting that the reward was increased from $1 million USD to $10 million late last month.

LockBit – also called Gold Mystic and Water Selkie – has had several iterations since its inception in September 2019, namely LockBit Red, LockBit Black, and LockBit Green, with the cybercrime syndicate also secretly developing a new version called LockBit-NG-Dev prior to its infrastructure being dismantled.

“LockBit-NG-Dev is now written in .NET and compiled using CoreRT,” Trend Micro said. “When deployed alongside the .NET environment, this allows the code to be more platform-agnostic. It removed the self-propagating capabilities and the ability to print ransom notes via the user’s printers.”

One of the notable additions is the inclusion of a validity period, which continues its operation only if the current date is within a specific date range, suggesting attempts on the part of the developers to prevent the reuse of the malware as well as resist automated analysis.

Work on the next generation variant is said to have been spurred by a number of logistical, technical, and reputational problems, prominently driven by the leak of the ransomware builder by a disgruntled developer in September 2022 and also misgivings that one of its administrators may have been replaced by government agents.

It also didn’t help that the LockBit-managed accounts were banned from Exploit and XSS towards the end of January 2024 for failing to pay an initial access broker who provided them with access.

“The actor came across as someone who was ‘too big to fail’ and even showed disdain to the arbitrator who would make the decision on the outcome of the claim,” Trend Micro said. “This discourse demonstrated that LockBitSupp is likely using their reputation to carry more weight when negotiating payment for access or the share of ransom payouts with affiliates.”

PRODAFT, in its own analysis of the LockBit operation, said it identified over 28 affiliates, some of whom share ties with other Russian e-crime groups like Evil Corp, FIN7, and Wizard Spider (aka TrickBot).

These connections are also evidenced by the fact that the gang operated as a “nesting doll” with three distinct layers, giving an outward perception of an established RaaS scheme compromising dozens of affiliates while stealthily borrowing highly skilled pen testers from other ransomware groups by forging personal alliances.

The smokescreen materialized in the form of what’s called a Ghost Group model, according to RedSense researchers Yelisey Bohuslavskiy and Marley Smith, with LockBitSupp serving “as a mere distraction for actual operations.”

“A Ghost Group is a group that has very high capabilities but transfers them to another brand by allowing the other group to outsource operations to them,” they said. “The clearest version of this is Zeon, who has been outsourcing their skills to LockBit and Akira.”

The group is estimated to have made more than $120 million in illicit profits in its multi-year run, emerging as the most active ransomware actor in history.

“Given that confirmed attacks by LockBit over their four years in operation total well over 2,000, this suggests that their impact globally is in the region of multi-billions of dollars,” the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

Needless to say, Operation Cronos has likely caused irreparable damage to the criminal outfit’s ability to continue with ransomware activities, at least under its current brand.

“The rebuilding of the infrastructure is very unlikely; LockBit’s leadership is very technically incapable,” RedSense said. “People to whom they delegated their infrastructural development have long left LockBit, as seen by the primitivism of their infra.”

“[Initial access brokers], which were the main source of LockBit’s venture, will not trust their access to a group after a takedown, as they want their access to be turned into cash.”

Feb 20, 2024NewsroomDark Web / Cybercrime

An international law enforcement operation has led to the seizure of multiple darknet domains operated by LockBit, one of the most prolific ransomware groups, marking the latest in a long list of digital takedowns.

While the full extent of the effort, codenamed Operation Cronos, is presently unknown, visiting the group’s .onion website displays a seizure banner containing the message “The site is now under the control of law enforcement.”

Authorities from 11 countries, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S., alongside Europol participated in the joint exercise.

Malware research group VX-Underground, in a message posted on X (formerly Twitter), said the websites were taken down by exploiting a critical security flaw impacting PHP (CVE-2023-3824, CVSS score: 9.8) that could result in remote code execution.

Law enforcement agencies also left on a note on the affiliate panel, stating they are in possession of the “source code, details of the victims you have attacked, the amount of money extorted, the data stolen, chats, and much, much more,” adding it was made possible due to LockBit’s “flawed infrastructure.”

LockBit, which emerged on September 3, 2019, has been one of the most active and notorious ransomware gangs in history, claiming more than 2,000 victims to date. It’s estimated to have extorted at least $91 million from U.S. organizations alone.

According to data shared by cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest, LockBit listed 275 victims on its data leak portal in the fourth quarter of 2023, dwarfing all its competitors.

There is no word as yet of any arrest or sanctions, but the development is a definite blow to LockBit’s near-term operations and arrives two months after the BlackCat ransomware operation was dismantled by the U.S. government.

The coordinated takedown also coincides with the arrest of a 31-year-old Ukrainian national for gaining unauthorized access to Google and online bank accounts of American and Canadian users by deploying malware and selling access to other threat actors on the dark web for financial gain.