Security News > 2021 > December > New Ransomware Variants Flourish Amid Law Enforcement Actions

Ransomware groups continue to evolve their tactics and techniques to deploy file-encrypting malware on compromised systems, notwithstanding law enforcement's disruptive actions against the cybercrime gangs to prevent them from victimizing additional companies.

Sweeping law enforcement operations undertaken by government agencies in recent months have brought about rapid shifts in the RaaS landscape and turned the tables on ransomware syndicates like Avaddon, BlackMatter, Cl0p, DarkSide, Egregor, and REvil, forcing the actors to slow down or shut down their businesses altogether.

Intel 471's findings have uncovered a total of 612 ransomware attacks between July to September 2021 that can be attributed to 35 different ransomware variants.

Avos Locker is one among the many such cartels that have not only witnessed a surge in attacks, but have also adopted new tactics to pursue their financially motivated schemes, chief among them being the ability to disable endpoint security products on the targeted systems and boot into Windows Safe Mode to execute the ransomware.

What's more, a relatively new ransomware family dubbed Pysa has unseated Conti as one of the top ransomware threat groups for the month of November alongside LockBit 2.0.

"While law enforcement around the world has gotten more aggressive in their efforts to arrest those behind attacks, developers are still easily shutting down popular variants, laying low, and coming back with finely-tuned malware used by themselves as well as affiliates," Intel 471 researchers said.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2021/12/new-ransomware-variants-flourish-amid.html