Article
Avaddon Ransomware Hits AXA
Arete Analysis
Combating Ransomware
Endpoint Detection and Response
Summary
Avaddon ransomware allegedly attacked European insurance provider AXA shortly after the company announced that it will stop paying ransoms for its clients. Our analysis provides an in-depth look at Avaddon’s tactics and recommended mitigations.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From September 2020 to May 2021, Arete responded to nine Avaddon ransomware engagements across varying industry sectors, including professional services, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, public services, and retail.
During the first week of May, Arete received an FBI Liaison Alert System (FLASH) CU-000145-MW from the FBI Cyber Division. The Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC) also released an alert about an ongoing Avaddon ransomware campaign.
According to reports, at the beginning of May 2021, AXA (one of Europe’s top five insurers) said it will stop reimbursing people in France who pay ransoms after cybercriminals target them with ransomware. It will also stop writing cyber insurance policies that cover customers for extortion payments to ransomware attackers. This decision is said to have come in response to concerns aired by French justice and cybersecurity officials during a recent senate roundtable in Paris about the global ransomware epidemic.
AXA has now found itself a victim of a ransomware breach. Public reports say that the Avaddon ransomware group has impacted AXA Asia Assistance IT operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. The group claims to have stolen 3 terabytes of data, including ID cards, passport copies, customer claims, reserved agreements, denied reimbursements, payments to customers, contracts and reports, customer IDs, bank account scanned papers, hospital and doctor reserved material (private investigation for fraud), and customer medical reports, including HIV, hepatitis, STD, and other illness reports. According to reports, the ransomware group said AXA had 240 hours to communicate and cooperate or they would start leaking valuable company documents.
While the juxtaposition of the AXA decision to not pay ransoms for French victims or even write ransomware coverage in France could have motivated the attack, Arete has no information or evidence to link these events. In general, and as disclosed in publicly released news reports, attacks against insurance companies are increasing.
In a recent interview, a member of the REvil ransomware gang was asked if they target organizations with cyber insurance. His response:
“Yes, this is one of the tastiest morsels. Especially to hack the insurers first — to get their customer base and work in a targeted way from there. And after you go through the list, then hit the insurer themselves.”
- "Unknown" REvil Ransomware Representative
In its CU-000145-MW FLASH Alert, the FBI notified of activity by cyber actors using Avaddon ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) to target U.S. and foreign private sector companies, manufacturing organizations, and healthcare agencies. The alert states that the threat actors:
Have compromised victims through remote access login credentials like remote desktop protocol (RDP) and virtual private network (VPN) with single-factor authentication or improperly configured RDP.
Once they gain access to a victim’s network, they map the network and identify backups for deletion and/or encryption. They use malware that escalates privileges, contains anti-analysis protection code, enables persistence on a victim system, and verifies the victim is not located in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Their ransomware terminates services and processes related to backup and antivirus running in system memory before encrypting victims’ data.
Encrypt and exfiltrate data from the victim network for extortion, threatening its release in their TOR leak site (avaddongun7rngel.onion) if victims don’t pay the ransom.
Will perform a 5% data leak if the ransom is not paid within three to five days and follow with a full leak of the data stolen if the ransom is not paid.
Announced in January 2021 that they would attack victims who do not pay ransoms with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Have used the following IPs during RDP connections: 185.216.33.0/24, 45.145.67.0/23, 193.27.229.0/23, 217.8.117.63.
The ACSC report includes some of the following tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs):
Phishing and malicious email spam (malspam) campaigns to deliver malicious JavaScript files. These are often low in sophistication, containing a threat suggesting the attached file contains a compromising photo of the victim.
Using “double extortion” techniques as coercion and further pressure to pay a ransom, including:
Threatening to publish the victim’s data via the Avaddon Data Leak Site (DLS): avaddongun7rngel.onion.
Threatening the use of DDoS attacks against the victim (first identified in February 2021).
Identify the default geolocation and system language of the user’s device to determine whether the user will be targeted for attack or not.
Use of Windows Scheduled Task to establish persistence.
The report also includes the following information about countries and sectors affected by this threat:
Statistical Data on Avaddon Ransomware From Arete Metrics
The information listed is based on Avaddon cases investigated by Arete IR since September 2020. Our IR and Data Analytics practices work together to track key data points for every ransomware engagement, and our IR practice tracks data points on the ransomware variant and collects statistics based on handled engagements:
Arete has responded to nine Avaddon breach response engagements since September 2020 in the following sectors: Professional Services | Financial Services | Healthcare | Hospitality | Public Services | Retail
At victim/breach coach/carrier request, Arete negotiated and paid the ransom in four of the nine Avaddon cases. In the remaining five cases, we were able to assist the victim in recovering from backups.
Average ransom demand: US$1,089,375.
Maximum ransom demand: US$4,000,000.
Minimum ransom demand: US$15,000.
We observed data exfiltration in 67% of the incidents.
Phishing emails and RDP were the methods of infection 60% of the time.
During investigations, our incident responders have observed threat actors using RDP to remote into the victim environment. We have seen attackers use Mimikatz, Advanced Port Scanner, Advanced IP Scanner, PsExec, Rclone, Gmer, and svhost.exe. We have also seen exe_[victim_org].exe as the ransomware file names.
Mitigation Measures Recommended By The FBI and ACSC
Back up critical data offline.
Ensure copies of critical data are in the cloud or on an external hard drive or storage device.
Secure your backups and ensure data is not accessible for modification or deletion from the system where the data resides.
Use two-factor authentication with strong passwords, including for remote access services.
Monitor cyber threat reporting regarding the publication of compromised VPN login credentials and change passwords/settings, if applicable.
Regularly change passwords to critical systems.
Keep computers, devices, and applications patched and up to date.
Install and regularly update antivirus or antimalware software on all hosts.
Scan emails and attachments to detect and block malware.
Implement a training program and processes to identify phishing and externally sourced emails.
Back to Blog Posts
Article
Europol Disrupts AudiA6 Crypto Laundering Service
European authorities have dismantled AudiA6, a major cryptocurrency laundering service linked to ransomware groups and broader cybercriminal networks. Between 2022 and 2025, the platform is believed to have processed over €336 million in illicit funds, enabling threat actors to obscure financial trails and monetize cybercrime proceeds. Its operators are also suspected of running Dark2Web, a dark web forum that facilitated collaboration, services, and connections among cybercriminals globally. This development underscores the expanding role of sophisticated, large-scale cryptocurrency laundering services in sustaining the cybercrime economy, enabling threat actors to obscure illicit funds and evade regulatory controls.
What’s Notable and Unique
Following law enforcement disruption of Cryptex and Garantex, AudiA6 emerged as another platform involved in financial activities linked to ransomware groups. Investigators believe that AudiA6 became a central hub for cybercriminals seeking to launder stolen digital assets while obscuring the transaction trail from authorities.
On June 10, 2026, a coordinated operation resulted in two arrests in Georgia, the dismantling of key infrastructure (30+ servers, 25 domains), the freezing or seizure of over €778,000 in crypto, and the takedown of the AudiA6 and Dark2Web platforms.
Analyst Comments
Ransomware groups and cybercriminal networks are increasingly leveraging sophisticated techniques, including chain-hopping, decentralized exchanges, and mixer-as-a-service platforms, to rapidly move illicit cryptocurrency across multiple blockchains, effectively obscuring transaction trails. Concurrently, the widespread use of fraudulent exchange accounts, mule wallets, and privacy-enhancing tools has elevated cryptocurrency laundering to a core enabler of the cybercrime ecosystem, allowing actors to bypass anti-money-laundering controls at scale. This investigation identified over 6,000 KYC records linked to money-mule accounts, many of which were tied to Russian-speaking intermediaries specifically recruited to facilitate the movement of illicit proceeds. These threat actors systematically used both commercial and domain-controlled email services to establish mule accounts across multiple cryptocurrency platforms. Collectively, these findings underscore the growing scale, coordination, and professionalization of cryptocurrency-enabled crime, highlighting the critical need for sustained, intelligence-led, and internationally coordinated efforts to disrupt these evolving financial ecosystems.
Sources
Ransomware gangs cut off from EUR 336 million ‘AudiA6’ crypto laundering pipeline
Article
Threat Actors Leverage AI for EDR Evasion
A threat actor has developed and deployed a ransomware attack toolkit enhanced with AI-assisted development workflows, enabling automated Active Directory (AD) discovery and improved EDR evasion capabilities. The toolkit leverages agent-based AI systems, such as Claude’s Opus and Cursor agents, for iterative malware development, testing, and refinement.
What’s Notable and Unique
Researchers have highlighted that this toolkit can not only generate ransomware code but also bypass sophisticated security defenses and identify AD networks for malware distribution.
The framework incorporates multiple capabilities, including automated AD discovery and reconnaissance mechanisms, iterative EDR testing environments to refine evasion techniques, and a command-and-control (C2) infrastructure that leverages Telegram APIs and Cloudflare redirectors for stealth.
Additionally, some agents were tasked with checking security research and technical posts for various bypass techniques. The agents recognized what was required for reproduction, extracted the techniques, mapped them to the MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base of adversary behaviors, set up a test lab, carried out the methodology, and reported the results.
After a few repetitions, the modules seemed to avoid nearly all EDR solutions, despite the agent’s initial suggestion of a high failure rate. Although researchers found no evidence that AI was embedded in deployed malware or was operating independently in victim environments, the technology was still used to accelerate the iterative process of developing, testing, and refining payloads against security products, shortening the period between the publication of offensive security research and its practical implementation by threat actors.
Analyst Comments
AI-driven tools like this could accelerate the pace and sophistication of ransomware attacks, enabling even relatively inexperienced actors to launch high-impact campaigns. This development underscores the urgent need for security solutions to adapt to AI-assisted threats. Organizations must respond by strengthening detection engineering, improving visibility across environments, and maintaining robust security fundamentals.
Sources
AI-built ransomware toolkit automates EDR evasion, AD discovery
Pointing a Cursor at evading detection
Article
Arete's 2026 Q1 Crimeware Report
Harness Arete’s unique data and expertise on extortion and ransomware to inform your response to the evolving threat landscape.
Article
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.
Sources
700+ education and tech websites hijacked in huge ClickFix malware campaign
Under the engineering hood: Why Malwarebytes chose WordPress as its CMS
Think before you Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix social engineering technique
Ghost CMS Vulnerability Exploited to Infect 700 Sites With ClickFix Malware