Big Game Hunting with Ryuk: Another Lucrative Targeted Ransomware

WIZARD SPIDER is a sophisticated eCrime group that has been operating the Ryuk ransomware since August 2018, targeting large organizations for a high-ransom return. This methodology, known as “big game hunting,” signals a shift in operations for WIZARD SPIDER. This actor is a Russia-based criminal group known for the operation of the TrickBot banking malware that had focused primarily on wire fraud in the past. 

The actor name GRIM SPIDER was introduced into CrowdStrike’s nomenclature in September 2018 for the group that operates the Ryuk ransomware as a distinct sub-group of the WIZARD SPIDER criminal enterprise. However, in June 2019, further evidence emerged that allowed CrowdStrike to assess with high confidence that Ryuk is in fact operating as part of the core WIZARD SPIDER actor group.

CrowdStrike Intelligence will now solely use the actor name WIZARD SPIDER in association with TrickBot and Ryuk. The GRIM SPIDER actor name has been deprecated.

Similar to Samas and BitPaymer, Ryuk is specifically used to target enterprise environments. Code comparison between versions of Ryuk and Hermes ransomware indicates that Ryuk was derived from the Hermes source code and has been under steady development since its release. Hermes is commodity ransomware that has been observed for sale on forums and used by multiple threat actors. However, Ryuk is only used by WIZARD SPIDER and, unlike Hermes, Ryuk has only been used to target enterprise environments. Since Ryuk’s appearance in August, the threat actors operating it have netted over 705.80 BTC across 52 transactions for a total current value of $3,701,893.98 USD.  

1. Ryuk Ransom Notes

The Ryuk ransom note is written in a file named RyukReadMe.txt. A number of different ransom note templates have been observed. The body of the template is static with the exception of the email address and the Bitcoin (BTC) wallet address, which may change. The email addresses usually contain one address at protonmail.com and another address at tutanota.com. The email names typically are esoteric actors and directors, but Instagram models have also been observed. Interestingly, the ransom note in Figure 3 is remarkably similar to the BitPaymer ransom notes. As of this writing, it remains unclear if WIZARD SPIDER is copying the TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) and ransom notes of BitPaymer, or whether the groups may share information with each other.

Figure 3. Ryuk Ransom Note Bearing Strong Resemblance to BitPaymer

The ransom email used by Ryuk appears to be unique for each compiled executable. Our Using threat intelligence, our team has observed several different email addresses, but the same BTC addresses across multiple Ryuk executables. On Nov. 29, 2018, WIZARD SPIDER changed how they communicated with their victims.  As seen in the previous ransom note version, WIZARD SPIDER included their BTC address and email addresses. However, recent variants of Ryuk no longer contain the BTC address — only the email addresses. The ransom note states that the victim will receive the BTC address as a reply from WIZARD SPIDER. The new ransom note can be seen below.

Figure 4. Ryuk Ransom With BTC Address Removed

Early Ryuk binaries with the removal of the BTC address contained a PDB path of C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Projects\ConsoleApplication54new crypted try to clean\x64\Release\ConsoleApplication54.pdb. This PDB path started appearing on Nov. 29, 2018. The removal of the BTC addresses occurred a day after the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed indictments for two individuals involved in facilitating cashouts from Samas Bitcoin addresses.

Ransom Payments

Based on observed transactions to known Ryuk BTC addresses, the ransom demand varies significantly. This suggests that WIZARD SPIDER (like INDRIK SPIDER with BitPaymer) calculates the ransom amount based on the size and value of the victim organization. To date, the lowest observed ransom was for 1.7 BTC and the highest was for 99 BTC. With 52 known transactions spread across 37 BTC addresses (as of this writing), WIZARD SPIDER has made 705.80 BTC, which has a current value of $3.7 million (USD). With the recent decline in BTC to USD value, it is likely GRIM SPIDER has netted more. The tables in the Appendix include a set of known Ryuk BTC addresses extracted from Ryuk binaries, which are believed to be only a subset of the Ryuk BTC addresses.

2. How Ryuk Ransomware is Distributed

CrowdStrike® has conducted multiple incident response (IR) engagements responding to Ryuk infections in which TrickBot was also identified on hosts in the victim environment. CrowdStrike Falcon® Intelligence™® believes that the initial compromise is performed through TrickBot, which is typically distributed either via spam email or, through the use of the Emotet (developed and operated by MUMMY SPIDER) geo-based download function. Falcon Intelligence has been monitoring the geo-based download activity from Emotet and, during 2018, MUMMY SPIDER has been an avid supporter of WIZARD SPIDER, predominantly distributing TrickBot to Emotet victims in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada.

Some of TrickBot’s modules (such as pwgrab) could aid in recovering the credentials needed to compromise environments — the SOCKS module in particular has been observed tunneling PowerShell Empire traffic to perform reconnaissance and lateral movement. Through CrowdStrike IR engagements, WIZARD SPIDER has been observed performing the following events on the victim’s network, with the end goal of pushing out the Ryuk binary:

• An obfuscated PowerShell script is executed and connects to a remote IP address.
• A reverse shell is downloaded and executed on the compromised host.
• PowerShell anti-logging scripts are executed on the host.
• Reconnaissance of the network is conducted using standard Windows command line tools along with external uploaded tools.
• Lateral movement throughout the network is enabled using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
• Service User Accounts are created.
• PowerShell Empire is downloaded and installed as a service.
• Lateral movement is continued until privileges are recovered to obtain access to a domain controller.
• PSEXEC is used to push out the Ryuk binary to individual hosts.
• Batch scripts are executed to terminate processes/services and remove backups, followed by the Ryuk binary.

3. From Hermes to Ryuk: Similarities & Differences

Hermes ransomware, the predecessor to Ryuk, was first distributed in February 2017. Only one month after its release, a decryptor was written for Hermes, followed by the release of version 2.0 in April 2017, which fixed vulnerabilities in its cryptographic implementation. Since this release, the only way for a victim to recover files is with the private encryption key, which is obtained by paying the ransom. In late August 2017, Hermes version 2.1 was released.

Hermes was originally sold on forums for $300 USD. When purchased, the buyer received a build that supported two email addresses, a decryptor, and a unique RSA key pair. If the purchaser desired more email addresses, they were required to purchase another build for an additional $50. The seller of Hermes ransomware appears to have stopped or limited advertising on forums in 2017.

Early versions of Hermes were reportedly installed via internet-accessible RDP servers protected by weak credentials. In October 2017, Hermes was deployed as a destructive distraction for a Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) compromise at the Far Eastern International Bank (FEIB) in Taiwan. Hermes’ role in the SWIFT attack is described in more detail in the Attribution section at the end of this blog. In March 2018, Hermes was observed targeting users in South Korea via the GreenFlash Sundown exploit kit.

In mid-August 2018, a modified version of Hermes, dubbed Ryuk, started appearing in a public malware repository. Ryuk was tailored to target enterprise environments and some of the modifications include removing anti-analysis checks. These checks include querying the Process Environment Block (PEB) to see if the field is BeingDebugged or querying the PEB to see if the field NtGlobalFlag has been set; checking to see if the host is running VirtualBox by calling the instruction CPUID; and ensuring that the host language is not Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian. From a process and file perspective, Hermes and Ryuk target files in a similar fashion. The core differences are Ryuk’s logic that handles file access, and the use of a second, embedded public RSA key.

The following are characteristics that have not changed:

• Encrypts files using RSA-2048 and AES-256
• Stores keys in the executable using the proprietary Microsoft SIMPLEBLOB format
• Encrypts mounted devices and remote hosts
• Uses a file marker of HERMES to mark or check if a file has been encrypted

Another notable difference between Hermes and Ryuk is how the encryption keys are created. Hermes starts the encryption initialization by first generating an RSA public and private key pair  — referred to as a “victim key.” An AES-256 key is generated and the victim’s RSA private key is encrypted in AES-CBC mode. The attacker-controlled public RSA key is used to encrypt the AES key (previously used to encrypt the victim’s RSA private key). Then, for each file encrypted, an AES key is generated, which is used to encrypt the file. Finally, the AES key for each file is encrypted with the victim’s RSA public key, then stored at the end of the file.

Ryuk contains the same logic, but no longer generates the victim-specific RSA key pair. Instead, Ryuk has two public RSA keys embedded in the executable, and what was previously the victim’s RSA private key is encrypted and embedded in the executable. Because Ryuk does not generate a victim-specific RSA key pair, all hosts can be decrypted with the same decryption key. This might appear to be a design flaw but is not, since Ryuk has a unique key for each executable.

If a single executable is used for a single victim environment, then there are no repercussions if the private keys are leaked because it will only decrypt the damage from a single Ryuk executable. Thus, it is highly likely that Ryuk pre-generates the RSA key pairs for each victim. This is arguably more secure since the victim’s system will never have access to the unencrypted RSA key pair parameters without paying the ransom. This approach is similar to INDRIK SPIDER’s BitPaymer ransomware, which generates a victim-specific sample with a hard-coded public key.

4. Ryuk Functionality: A Technical Analysis

There are two types of Ryuk binaries: a dropper (which is not commonly observed) and the Ryuk executable payload. Recovery of Ryuk droppers is rare, due to the Ryuk executable payload deleting the dropper when executed. Upon execution, the dropper constructs an installation folder path. The folder path is created by calling GetWindowsDirectoryW and then inserting a null byte at the fourth character of the path. This is used to create a string that contains the drive letter path. If the host operating system is Windows XP or earlier, the string Documents and Settings\Default User\ is appended to the drive letter path. If the host is Windows Vista or newer, the string users\Public\ is appended to the drive letter path. For Windows XP, an example folder path would be C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\, and for Windows Vista or higher, the path would be C:\Users\Public.

A random executable file name is then constructed. It is created by calling _srand with a seed value returned from calling, then _rand is continuously called until five alphabetic characters are concatenated together. The extension .exe is then appended. The dropper checks whether the host is 32-bit or 64-bit by calling IsWow64Process and writing one of two embedded payload executables corresponding to the host’s architecture. The newly written executable is then run by calling ShellExecuteW. The Ryuk payload executable written by the dropper is the Ryuk component that contains the core logic for encrypting files on the host.

Ryuk is under constant development. In recent months, Ryuk binaries have continued to deviate further and further from the original Hermes source code, with the threat actors adding and removing functionality often. In November 2018, Falcon Intelligence identified new functionality added to Ryuk that included an anti-analysis infinite loop, a ping-like request to an IP address once the encryption process was completed, and the addition of an appended file extension for encrypted files. Of these three new features, only the file extension is still present in an executable compiled on Dec. 20, 2018.

File Encryption

Compared to other families of ransomware, Ryuk has very few safeguards to ensure the stability of the host by not encrypting system files. For example, many ransomware families contain extensive lists of file extensions or folder names that should not be encrypted (whitelisted), but Ryuk only whitelists three extensions: It will not encrypt files with the extensions, or hrmlog. The last extension appears to be a debug log filename created by the original Hermes developer. It should be noted that absent from this list is sys (system drivers), ocx (OLE control extension) and other executable file types. Encrypting these files could make the host unstable. Early versions of Ryuk included the whitelisting of ini and lnk files, but these have been removed in recent builds. The following folder names are also whitelisted and not encrypted.

• Chrome
• Mozilla
• Recycle.bin
• Windows
• Microsoft
• AhnLab

This is only a small subset of folder names that should be whitelisted in order to ensure stability on the host. While doing dynamic analysis, it was not uncommon to observe Ryuk attempting to encrypt files related to the Windows Bootloader (C:\Boot) or other critical files and folders. Due to the absence of proper whitelisting, an infected machine can become unstable over time and unbootable if restarted.

As mentioned in the Hermes to Ryuk section, Ryuk uses a combination of symmetric (AES) and asymmetric (RSA) encryption to encrypt files. Without the private key provided by WIZARD SPIDER, the files cannot be decrypted and are unrecoverable. A thread is created for the encryption of each file and each file is encrypted with its own AES key. After the file has been encrypted, a file extension .RYK is appended to the file. All directories will have a ransom note of (RyukReadMe.txt) written to the directory.

Ryuk attempts to encrypt all mounted drives and hosts that have Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) entries (IP addresses) and it enumerates all mounted drives by calling GetLogicalDrives. For each mounted drive, Ryuk calls GetDriveTypeW to determine the drive’s type. If the drive type is not a CD-ROM, files on the drive are encrypted. To retrieve IP addresses that have ARP entries, Ryuk calls GetIpNetTable. It iterates through all entries and then tries to enumerate files and folders on the remote host and encrypt the files.

Persistence

Current builds of Ryuk no longer contain persistence functionality. Previously, to remain persistent on the host, Ryuk created a registry entry under the Run key using Windows cmd.exe shell. The following command line was used to write the Registry Run Key name svchos to  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run with the value being the path to the Ryuk executable.

Process Injection

Ryuk does not encrypt files from within its own process memory space but injects them into a remote process. Before injecting into a remote process, Ryuk attempts to adjust its token privileges to have the SeDebugPrivilege. It takes no action if the adjustment of the token privileges fails. Before injecting into a remote process, Ryuk also calls CreateToolhelp32Snapshot to enumerate all running processes. If a process is found that is not named csrss.exe, explorer.exe, lsaas.exe, or is running under NT AUTHORITY system account, Ryuk will inject itself into this single process. By ensuring that the process is not running under NT AUTHORITY, the developers are assuming the process is not running under another account and therefore can be written to. Ryuk uses a combination of VirtualAlloc, WriteProcessMemory and CreateRemoteThread to inject itself into the remote process.

Process/Service Termination and Anti-Recovery Commands

Unlike other families of ransomware, Ryuk does not contain process/service termination and anti-recovery functionality embedded in the executable. In the past, Ryuk did contain these capabilities, but they have been removed and are contained within two batch files.

The batch file kill.bat contains commands for stopping services, disabling services, and killing processes. The processes and services are stopped to ensure no open handles exist for files that will be encrypted. The following figure is a subset of each command.

net stop avpsus /y
net stop McAfeeDLPAgentService /y
net stop mfewc /y
net stop BMR Boot Service /y
net stop NetBackup BMR MTFTP Service /y
…
sc config SQLTELEMETRY start= disabled
sc config SQLTELEMETRY$ECWDB2 start= disabled
sc config SQLWriter start= disabled
sc config SstpSvc start= disabled
…
taskkill /IM mspub.exe /F
taskkill /IM mydesktopqos.exe /F
taskkill /IM mydesktopservice.exe /F

Figure 1. Process/Services Termination kill.bat Commands

CrowdStrike has observed another batch file, named windows.bat, which makes file recovery more difficult on the victim’s machine. It should be noted that file names can be arbitrarily changed by the threat actors. The contents of the batch file are shown below in Figure 2.

vssadmin Delete Shadows /all /quiet
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=401MB
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=unbounded
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=d: /on=d: /maxsize=401MB
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=d: /on=d: /maxsize=unbounded
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=e: /on=e: /maxsize=401MB
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=e: /on=e: /maxsize=unbounded
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=f: /on=f: /maxsize=401MB
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=f: /on=f: /maxsize=unbounded
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=g: /on=g: /maxsize=401MB
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=g: /on=g: /maxsize=unbounded
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=h: /on=h: /maxsize=401MB
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=h: /on=h: /maxsize=unbounded
vssadmin Delete Shadows /all /quiet
del /s /f /q c:\*.VHD c:\*.bac c:\*.bak c:\*.wbcat c:\*.bkf c:\Backup*.* c:\backup*.* c:\*.set c:\*.win c:\*.dsk
del /s /f /q d:\*.VHD d:\*.bac d:\*.bak d:\*.wbcat d:\*.bkf d:\Backup*.* d:\backup*.* d:\*.set d:\*.win d:\*.dsk
del /s /f /q e:\*.VHD e:\*.bac e:\*.bak e:\*.wbcat e:\*.bkf e:\Backup*.* e:\backup*.* e:\*.set e:\*.win e:\*.dsk
del /s /f /q f:\*.VHD f:\*.bac f:\*.bak f:\*.wbcat f:\*.bkf f:\Backup*.* f:\backup*.* f:\*.set f:\*.win f:\*.dsk
del /s /f /q g:\*.VHD g:\*.bac g:\*.bak g:\*.wbcat g:\*.bkf g:\Backup*.* g:\backup*.* g:\*.set g:\*.win g:\*.dsk
del /s /f /q h:\*.VHD h:\*.bac h:\*.bak h:\*.wbcat h:\*.bkf h:\Backup*.* h:\backup*.* h:\*.set h:\*.win h:\*.dsk
del %0

Figure 2. Anti-Recovery window.bat Commands

These anti-forensic recovery commands are quite interesting and appear to make use of an undocumented feature of the vssadmin resize command. While the first command in Figure 2 above, vssadmin Delete Shadows /all /quiet, is commonly used by ransomware, the command option vssadmin resize shadowstorage is rarely used. In situations where shadow copies were not created, but by third-party applications (such as backup software), vssadmin can display an error and not delete the backups. One such error states: “Snapshots were found, but they were outside of your allowed context. Try removing them with the backup application which created them.” The vssadmin resize shadowstorage command is a “hack” that relies on vssadmin to delete storage when the shadow copies are resized. It forces the shadow copies to be deleted regardless of their context. The command works by resizing the default shadow volume size from 10 percent to 401 MB (the minimum size is 300 MB). Then the shadow storage is set to unbounded, which allows it to use all available disk space. The shadow copies are then deleted by calling the command vssadmin Delete Shadows /all /quiet a second time.

The final set of commands deletes files based on their extension or folder locations. The command arguments are for del delete files in all sub-directories (/s) in quiet mode (/q) without asking the user for confirmation and to force (/f)  the deletion of a file. The file extensions are for Virtual Hard Disk (.VHD), Avantrix Backup Plus files (.bac), backup copy (.bak), Windows Backup Catalog File (.wbcat), Windows Backup Utility File (.bfk), setting files (.set), Windows Backup File (.win), Disk Images (.dsk) and all folders that start with Backup. Note that since the del command does not securely delete a file (i.e., overwrite a file before deletion), some level of file recovery may be possible using forensic tools. The last command of del %0 deletes the executing .bat file.

The anti-recovery commands used by Ryuk are more extensive than most ransomware families. These commands have not been observed being used by other ransomware families yet. This indicates that the threat actors have a thorough understanding of enterprise backup software.

5. Attribution

North Korea

Open-source reporting has claimed that the Hermes ransomware was developed by the North Korean group STARDUST CHOLLIMA (activities of which have been publicly reported as part of the “Lazarus Group”), because Hermes was executed on a host during the SWIFT compromise of FEIB in October 2017. Table 1 contains samples that are possibly attributed to the compromise. The two executables related to Hermes are bitsran.exe and RSW7B37.tmp.

Table 1. File Information for Binaries Used in the FEIB SWIFT Compromise

The first executable, bitsran.exe is a dropper, and RSW7B37.tmp is the Hermes ransomware executable. The dropper’s goal is to propagate the Hermes executable within a network by creating scheduled tasks over SMB sessions using hard-coded credentials. The Hermes executable then encrypts files on the host. It is interesting to note that the compiler and linker for Hermes are different from the other executables. All of the executables except for Hermes were compiled with Visual Studio 10, with a linker of Visual Studio 10. Hermes, in contrast, was compiled with Visual Studio 9, with an unknown linker.

If the time stamps are correct, the two executables (bitsran.exe and RSW7B37.tmp) were compiled within four hours and three minutes of each other. Due to the short time frame of Hermes being bundled within an executable that was hard-coded with credentials of the FEIB network, Falcon Intelligence assesses that STARDUST CHOLLIMA likely had access to the Hermes source code, or a third party compiled and built a new version for them. Unlike other variants of Hermes, RSW7B37.tmp does not append the exported and encrypted AES key to the end of the file. Figure 5 is a file encrypted by Hermes with the exported AES key appended to the end of the file as a footer.

Figure 5. Example Hermes Footer with Encrypted AES Key

Figure 6 is the end of a file encrypted by the Hermes variant RSW7B37.tmp used in the SWIFT attack. The footer only contains the marker HERMES but not the exported AES key.

Figure 6. Example Hermes Footer in FEIB SWIFT Attack with Encrypted AES Key Missing

Without the encrypted AES key appended to the encrypted files, even if the private key used for encryption was recovered, the files could not be decrypted. Therefore, the Hermes executable used in the FEIB SWIFT attack appears never to have been used to ransom the machine, but rather to destroy the victim’s data.

Criminal Actors Operating from Russia

Falcon Intelligence has medium-high confidence that the WIZARD SPIDER threat actors are operating out of Russia. Hermes was originally advertised on exploit[.]in. This Russian-speaking forum is a well-known marketplace for selling malware and related services to criminal threat actors. If Hermes was indeed related to STARDUST CHOLLIMA, it would imply that nation-state threat actors are selling their services on Russian-speaking forums, which is unlikely.

The Russian threat actor attribution theory is also supported by an early advertisement for Hermes, which stated that their “software did not work and will on work on RU, UA, BY” [sic]. This refers to functionality implemented in Hermes to check the host to ensure that it is not running on a Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian system. To check the host language, it queries the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Language\ and the value InstallLanguage. If the machine has the value 0419 (Russian), 0422 (Ukrainian), or 0423 (Belarusian), it calls ExitProcess to stop executing. This functionality is commonly included by malware developers and sellers who are operating in Russia to reduce their risk of attracting local law enforcement’s attention and criminal prosecution.

While supporting an incident response investigation involving Ryuk, Falcon Intelligence noticed files related to the investigation being uploaded to a file-scanning website from an IP address in Moscow, Russia. The file in question was a variant kill.bat that contained commands previously only observed executed by Ryuk calling ShellExecute. The files could have been uploaded by a victim in Russia, but the time frame between the functionality being removed from Ryuk binaries and included kill.bat was very short. The most likely scenario is that threat actors were testing whether kill.bat would be detected by antivirus engines.

Also, during the forensic investigation of a network compromised by WIZARD SPIDER, CrowdStrike Services recovered artifacts with filenames in Russian. One file was named, which translates to “files for work.”  Based on these factors, there is considerably more evidence supporting the hypothesis that the WIZARD SPIDER threat actors are Russian speakers and not North Korean.

How CrowdStrike Can Prevent Ryuk

The Falcon platform has the ability to detect and prevent Ryuk by taking advantage of the behavioral patterns indicated by the ransomware. By turning on suspicious process blocking, Falcon ensures that Ryuk is killed in the very early stages of execution. In addition, CrowdStrike’s machine learning (ML) algorithm provides additional coverage against this malware family, as illustrated below.

Appendix

Known Ryuk BTC Wallet Addresses and Payments

Indicators

The following table contains the hashes of recently compiled Ryuk payloads:

The following table contains hashes of Hermes executables that were previously analyzed: