Ransomware as a Service | Hacker News Reader

Ransomware as a Service

isc.sans.edu

160 pointshmhrex36 comments

>Communications with the C2 server are performed via HTTPS: kdvm5fd6tn6jsbwh[.]onion[.]to (185[.]100[.]85[.]150) located in Romania.

That's just a tor tunnel, IP and location doesn't matter.

They also posted a bunch of hashes for a file which was customized for them, and then remarked that virustotal hadn't seen it.

Though it does make me think that it would be a good trick to offer this 'service', but then keep all the proceeds (everyone gets the same ransomware download). Maybe less profitable on the long term though.

> They also posted a bunch of hashes for a file which was customized for them, and then remarked that virustotal hadn't seen it.

Surely antivirus are not just trying to match the SHA1 of executables with SHA1 of known virus/malware, otherwise it would be trivial to bypass them.

They used to do a lot of fancy things, back in the days, including running bits of suspicious executables in heavily sandboxed interpreters to spot behavioral patterns.

I'm guessing those kind of approaches have largely gone away, being replaced with signatures that are hopefully fuzzier than a wholesale cryptographic hash, but still essentially only catching things after the fact, which works well with subscription business models.

No, AV has capabilities much more sophisticated then that, however from what I understand, within the malware analysis community specific samples are generally identified with their hash. In addition, if the hash of a file is known-bad, you can skip all the binary pattern matching and heuristics and stuff.

Most not-shit AV runs checks from easy to hard so it will blacklist/whitelist on easy identifiers (like hash) and only do a more in-depth look at greylist stuff

many modern ones have ML engines. Also some enterprise products can detonate the executable in specially created vms to observe what happens.

The hashes are used to downlod the samples from various sources, not as IoC.

> "Based on the strings present in the PE file, it has been written in Go"

I find this kind of interesting. I've seen reports on other malware/virus stuff written in Go recently. I wonder if this is because the ability to cross compile with Go is pretty painless? Or is it because the language is fairly approachable but still allows you to dig a bit "deeper" if you need to?

Maybe it’s a social reason and not a technical one… like, maybe Go is more popular in… some… country… and maybe that country happens to be over represented in… I mean, obviously not. Of course.

But maybe…

This sort of comment is pretty frustrating for people who don't already know what you're talking about. What are you trying to say?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=golang#GEO_MAP

That is very interesting, thanks for providing the link.

Keep in mind that you get the same results for python, javascript, Java, Kotlin and even lisp

Yep, you're right:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=python#GEO_MAP

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=java#GEO_MAP

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=javascript#GEO_MA...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=Kotlin#GEO_MAP

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=lisp#GEO_MAP

My guess is that:

1. China blocks Google

2. Technical users in China use VPN to circumvent said block, while non-technical users switch to something else

3. Technical users search for programming language terms a lot

4. Thus the normalized ratio of (programming language search queries) / (total search queries) is a lot higher in China compared to other countries where Google isn't blocked

You sure?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=kotlin,python,jav...

China?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855571

They are proposing that countries where it is very lucrative and popular to write spyware for money are also countries where golang is popular, thus making it a social reason as to why they are getting written in golang as opposed to any technical one like cross compilation.

The list of countries where spyware is written intersected with golang popularity to me is actually a rough one, measuring languages' regional popularity always seems fraught.

Beyond assembly code and C, which is used for obvious reasons, malware authors often just use a language they are familiar with, like any other developer. Lots of malware has been written in Delphi, which has been popular in Eastern Europe, and even some in Visual Basic.

In addition to easy cross compiling, being able to easily link statically is another nice feature of Go. You get one executable that has everything it needs to run.

That's exactly why I chose it when I made a PoC ransomware. That and using a virtual file system that bundles all assets into the executable, having a decent stdlib, tons of well written libraries and being able to cross-compile with ease.

> The business model behind the service is simple: the bad guys keep 10% of the ransom.

Creating a ransomware is indeed not a very nice thing to do, but IMO the ones that deserve the most to be called "bad guys" are the ones that actually spread the binary (so, the ones that keep the other 90%)

They're all bad guys, brent.

Nooooooo........

We just like the marching, and the boots, and the hats.

I'm ok with calling them both bad guys.

So, like an arms dealer that will sell to anyone?

I was thinking of that analogy as well. With weapons, you can claim it is for self defense.

I guess some people will argue that releasing ransomware will make software developers study the different types of attacks, so they increase security in computer systems.

They do increase security... but if violating security could be justified like that, then why have any security at all? You'd already have a useful justification for legitimately violating security.

Like if drinking poison builds up immunity, you don't get a free pass to feed people poison because of it. If you did, then the immunity goal doesn't matter because everyone would be poisoned to death first.

and if push comes to shove mention that offence is the best defence.

I find it somewhat ironic they include a captcha to protect against malicious users.

Don't want to wind up in an Xzibit moment. "Yo dog, we heard you like ransomware, so we put ransomware in your ransomware so we can steal when you steal!"

That's probably where the real money is to be made...

When you're evil, the first thing you lose is trust in everyone else. After all, if you can stab in the back, what stops others from stabbing you?

I'm waiting for something like this to take the form of an Ethereum smart contract.

Yes. Automated trading is going to bring about many terrifying things, unfortunately.

Interestingly it does not seem to be a new concept: https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/37ko5v/introducing_... https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/meet-tox-ran...

They used to take 20% 'commission'.

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