Article
Ransomware Trends & Data Insights: April 2025
Arete Analysis
Cybersecurity Trends
Throughout April, analysts at Arete identified several distinct trends behind the threat actors perpetrating cybercrime activities:
Play and Qilin were the most active ransomware groups observed by Arete in April, with Akira rounding out the top three most active threat groups. More notable was the number of new or emerging threat actors active during the month, including AiLock, Anubis, Brain Cypher, Cortex, and World Leaks.
RansomHub’s infrastructure, including its Tor victim chats and data leak site (DLS), was down throughout April with no confirmed cause or indication of when/if the group will come back online. Although a separate threat group, DragonForce, claimed that RansomHub would be moving to their infrastructure, there has been no credible indication of the two groups merging. Given DragonForce’s lack of historical sophistication compared to other threat groups, Arete assesses that DragonForce is unlikely to function as a service provider to other threat actors without the help of more experienced outside threat actors.
In April, Arete observed incidents from the new World Leaks extortion group. In late 2024, Hunters International announced the end of its ransomware operation, citing increased risk and declining profitability due to government actions and global geopolitical pressures. In its place, they would be shifting to extortion-only attacks and launching a new project called World Leaks, in which affiliates would be equipped with a custom-built exfiltration tool to automate data theft from victim networks. Despite the activity from this new World Leaks group, Arete continues to observe activity from Hunter’s International, and the group has not yet shut down its operations. However, in recent engagements, the group has not encrypted victim data and has instead focused on data exfiltration.
During April, threat actors actively exploited a critical vulnerability in the managed file transfer solution CrushFTP (CVE-2025-31161). The flaw is relatively simple to exploit, and public exploit code is readily available, increasing risk for organizations that use the platform. While this has not yet led to widespread extortion events, evidence of the exploit could result in future incidents related to the vulnerability.
Below are the 15 distinct ransomware variants encountered during April, based on the percentage of total ransomware and extortion engagements throughout the month:
Figure 1. Activity from all identified threat groups in April 2025
Sources
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CMS Vulnerability Leads to ClickFix Campaign
Threat actors compromised at least 700 education and technology websites in a recent ClickFix campaign by exploiting a critical SQL injection flaw (CVE-2026-26980) in the Ghost content management system (CMS). Adversaries combined the vulnerability with the ClickFix social engineering tactic to steal admin keys and inject a malicious JavaScript that delivers a fake Cloudflare or CAPTCHA verification pop-up, tricking victims into copying and pasting a malicious command into their systems.
What’s Notable and Unique
Rather than targeting the end user first, this campaign is unique in its initial exploitation of the system, followed by social engineering attempts. This hybrid attack style is likely being leveraged to bypass traditional defenses.
This recent campaign also highlights how trusted web properties can be weaponized at scale and coupled with unpatched CMS vulnerabilities. Rather than using the CMS compromise to perpetrate a single attack, threat actors turned it into a supply-chain attack that ultimately affected over 700 trusted websites.
Analyst Comments
As network defenders and their tools enhance threat detection capabilities, adversaries increasingly seek methods to bypass these defenses. By combining vulnerability exploitation, social engineering techniques, and staging for ancillary attacks, this campaign successfully bypassed traditional defenses and inflicted significant impact. Defending against hybrid cyberattacks requires comprehensive security controls beyond simply patching vulnerabilities. Organizations should focus on limiting movement within the environment, detecting abuse of trusted applications, and preventing end-user manipulation.
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Threat Actors Leverage Fake JPEG Files for Initial Access
In a recent campaign, researchers observed threat actors using fake JPEG image files as a delivery mechanism to initiate the deployment of additional malicious components. The false JPEG files are typically distributed via phishing emails or other social engineering-based lures, and are actually PowerShell-based malware that deploys a trojanized version of ConnectWise ScreenConnect to establish and maintain persistence in the compromised environment.
What’s Notable and Unique
This campaign leverages JPEG images as the initial lure, where the images are not merely decoys but part of the infection workflow. Victims are typically led to download or open an image that triggers hidden execution logic or redirects them to a payload-delivery sequence that initiates later stages of the intrusion chain.
The attack chain is designed to blend into legitimate environments, making detection more difficult. Execution typically relies on scripted or native Windows components, often including PowerShell or other living-off-the-land binaries, enabling fileless or near-fileless execution and reducing forensic artifacts on disk.
The multistage design ensures that the initial JPEG does not directly contain the full payload but instead triggers retrieval or decryption steps that progressively assemble the final malicious components in memory.
Analyst Comments
This campaign illustrates how threat actors continue to blur the line between legitimate file handling and malicious execution chains, indicating potential overlap with remote management or administrative tooling. The use of JPEG-based staging combined with script-based execution reflects a broader evolution toward a stealth-first intrusion design, in which file formats serve as triggers rather than payload containers.
Sources
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