BleepingComputer reports that Windows systems are being encrypted by Iranian state-backed hacking group DEV-0270, also known as Nemesis Kitten, in new attacks exploiting the BitLocker data protection feature.
"DEV-0270 has been seen using setup.bat commands to enable BitLocker encryption, which leads to the hosts becoming inoperable. For workstations, the group uses DiskCryptor, an open-source full disk encryption system for Windows that allows for the encryption of a device's entire hard drive," warned Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence.
Microsoft said that DEV-0270 had time to ransom of nearly two days and demanded $8,000 in ransom for decryption keys. The report also showed that DEV-0270 serves as a subgroup of Iranian state-sponsored threat operation Phosphorus, also known as APT35 and Charming Kitten, which is operated by Iranian firm Secnerd, also known as Lifeweb, which is associated with Najee Technology Hooshmand.
"The group is typically opportunistic in its targeting: the actor scans the internet to find vulnerable servers and devices, making organizations with vulnerable and discoverable servers and devices susceptible to these attacks," said Microsoft.
Operations of California's Solano Partner Libraries and St. Helena, or SPLASH, continue to be interrupted weeks after the county's library network was targeted by a ransomware attack earlier this month, StateScoop reports.
Several rootkit-like capabilities could be obtained by threat actors through the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Windows' DOS-to-NT path conversion process, including file and process concealment and compromised prefetch file analysis, reports The Hacker News.
Open-source DevOps software project GitLab has also been impacted by the same security issue in GitHub comments that has been exploited by threat actors through Microsoft repository-linked URLs to facilitate the distribution of malware that was made to seem to originate from credible entities' official source code repositories, according to BleepingComputer.