Nitrogen Ransomware poses a critical threat to the financial sector by encrypting data and exploiting system vulnerabilities to disable defenses. ANY.RUN’s sandbox and threat intelligence tools provide crucial insights to detect and combat this emerging ransomware. (Affected: financial sector, cybersecurity professionals)
Keypoints :
- The financial sector is heavily targeted by ransomware, with attacks causing massive financial losses.
- Nitrogen Ransomware emerged in September 2024, primarily targeting finance, construction, manufacturing, and tech sectors.
- A notable attack involved SRP Federal Credit Union, impacting over 195,000 customers.
- Nitrogen shares similarities with LukaLocker ransomware, suggesting possible links.
- Key tactics include creating a unique mutex, exploiting the truesight.sys vulnerable driver, and manipulating system boot settings via bcdedit.exe.
- Exploitation of truesight.sys disables antivirus and endpoint detection tools to evade defenses.
- Disabling Windows Safe Boot hinders recovery and prolongs ransomware impact.
- ANY.RUN’s Interactive Sandbox enables dynamic malware analysis and uncovers additional indicators of compromise (IOCs).
- Threat Intelligence Lookup helps track mutexes, drivers, and system manipulation activities to enhance detection.
- Proactive monitoring, blocking malicious infrastructure, and employee education are critical defense strategies.
MITRE Techniques :
- Execution through Command-Line Interface (T1059) – Use of bcdedit.exe to disable Windows Safe Boot.
- Disabling Security Tools (T1562.001) – Exploiting truesight.sys driver to terminate AV and EDR processes.
- Impair Defenses (T1562) – Disabling security mechanisms to evade detection.
- File Encryption (T1486) – Encrypting critical data files to demand ransom.
- Mutex Creation (T1497) – Creating unique mutex to prevent multiple ransomware instances.
- System Owner/User Discovery (T1087) – Potential reconnaissance to identify system environment before execution.
- Command-Line Interface (T1059) – Usage of PowerShell and other command-line tools observed in related activity.
Indicator of Compromise :
- The article includes file hash indicators such as SHA-256 hash 55f3725ebe01ea19ca14ab14d747a6975f9a6064ca71345219a14c47c18c88be linked to Nitrogen ransomware.
- Unique mutex nvxkjcv7yxctvgsdfjhv6esdvsx used by Nitrogen to manage ransomware execution.
- Malicious use of vulnerable driver truesight.sys (SHA-256: Bfc2ef3b404294fe2fa05a8b71c7f786b58519175b7202a69fe30f45e607ff1c) exploited to disable security software.
- System events involving bcdedit.exe manipulation to disable Safe Boot represent behavioral IOCs.
- YARA rules reveal attempts to tamper with system configurations prior to ransomware activation.
Read more: https://any.run/cybersecurity-blog/cybersecurity-blog/nitrogen-ransomware-report/
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