Our Insights
Providing you the latest industry-specific news and insights.
Egregor: The Ghost of Soviet Bears Past Haunts On
By Adam Brown and Harold Rodriguez, Arete Cyber Threat Intelligence Team Ransomware variants come. Ransomware variants go. And while Egregor may have only recently surfaced, it is by no means a fly-by-night operation. In fact, one could argue that…
Read moreDear Ramey: On Prosecuting Cybercriminals
ANSWERING BURNING QUESTIONS FROM VICTIMS OF CYBER EVENTS DEAR RAMEY: I’ve read a lot about the recent events in cybersecurity involving supply chain breaches, ransomware attacks, and theft of sensitive information from both large and small…
Read moreWastedLocker Ransomware Insights
BACKGROUND On the December 5th, 2019 the U.S. Department of Justice announced indictments against 17 individuals including 2 Russian nationals Maksim Yakubets and Igor Turashev that were the primary ring-leaders of the Russian hacking group known as…
Read moreThe Road Back: Recovery from a Malware Attack in the Long Term
Arete Incident Response is currently answering the call of duty for about 60 companies per month who have experienced malware intrusions. These are mostly ransomware or business email compromise attacks. Arete’s primary goal is to restore what was…
Read moreRansomware Decryptors for a (varying) fee
Ransomware attacks wreak havoc on business operations. Destroying recovery options, instilling fear and panic, and most often creating high levels of stress for IT staff, owners, and operators. A simple, but often costly fix is to just pay the…
Read moreNo One Is Immune to Cyberattacks
On December 8, 2020, the New York Times reported that FireEye (NASDAQ:FEYE) was hacked. Moments later, almost every major news outlet, security blogger, U.S. government agency, and security company released additional articles and opinions on the…
Read moreAnti-virus or AI driven Endpoint Protection?
Stephen Ramey Arete investigates a lot of ransomware attacks. In fact, 90% of our business is helping organizations big and small, recover from and investigate ransomware attacks. Variants like Maze, Sodinokibi, WastedLocker, Ryuk,…
Read moreSodinokibi Labels Keys with “Black Lives Matter”
OVERVIEW Since January 2020, the Arete IR practice has responded to forty-one (41) Sodinokibi engagements. The industry has seen two big changes with Sodinokibi/REvil from their shift to exfiltrating data as of January 2020, and more, recently with…
Read moreUS Government Alerts of Imminent Attacks Against the Healthcare Sector by Trickbot Group
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Last week, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the following alert: AA20-302A…
Read moreAKO Ransomware – Analysis
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since January 2020, Arete’s incident response (IR) team has responded to various AKO ransomware engagements. Recently, we have encountered these specific attacks against the Finance, Healthcare, and Manufacturing sectors. This…
Read moreConti Ransomware is the New Ryuk?
BACKGROUND Based on analysis of Conti ransomware, which was originally spotted in the wild in February of this year, the Arete Threat Intelligence team believes that this variant is being operated by the same group that conducted Ryuk…
Read moreUniversal Encryption
Ransomware variants like Ryuk, WastedLocker, and Dopplepaymer are also file level encryption. These groups will gain access to the network and perform reconnaissance to identify the victim, understand their business, identify critical systems, and…
Read more