Iran-based Cyber Actors Enabling Ransomware Attacks on US Organizations
28-August-24
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to warn network defenders that, as of August 2024, a group of Iran-based cyber actors continues to exploit U.S. and foreign organizations. This includes organizations across several sectors in the U.S. (including in the education, finance, healthcare, and defense sectors as well as local government entities) and other countries (including in Israel, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates). The FBI assesses a significant percentage of these threat actors’ operations against US organizations are intended to obtain and develop network access to then collaborate with ransomware affiliate actors to deploy ransomware. The FBI further assesses these Iran-based cyber actors are associated with the Government of Iran (GOI) and—separate from the ransomware activity—conduct computer network exploitation activity in support of the GOI (such as intrusions enabling the theft of sensitive technical data against organizations in Israel and Azerbaijan).
This CSA provides the threat actor’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs), as well as highlights similar activity from a previous advisory (Iran-Based Threat Actor Exploits VPN Vulnerabilities) that the FBI and CISA published on Sept. 15, 2020. The information and guidance in this advisory are derived from FBI investigative activity and technical analysis of this group’s intrusion activity against U.S. organizations and engagements with numerous entities impacted by this malicious activity.
The FBI recommends all organizations follow guidance provided in the Mitigations section of this advisory to defend against the Iranian cyber actors’ activity. The FBI previously observed these actors attempt to monetize their access to victim organizations on cyber marketplaces. A significant percentage of the group’s US-focused cyber activity is in furtherance of obtaining and maintaining technical access to victim networks to enable future ransomware attacks. The actors offer full domain control privileges, as well as domain admin credentials, to numerous networks worldwide. More recently, the FBI identified these actors collaborating directly with ransomware affiliates to enable encryption operations in exchange for a percentage of the ransom payments. These actors have collaborated with the ransomware affiliates NoEscape[3], Ransomhouse[4], and ALPHV (aka BlackCat) (#StopRansomware: ALPHV Blackcat). The Iranian cyber actors’ involvement in these ransomware attacks goes beyond providing access; they work closely with ransomware affiliates to lock victim networks and strategize on approaches to extort victims. The FBI assesses these actors do not disclose their Iran-based location to their ransomware affiliate contacts and are intentionally vague as to their nationality and origin.
Furthermore, the FBI has historically observed this actor conduct hack-and-leak campaigns, such as the late 2020 campaign known as Pay2Key.[5],[6] The actors operated a .onion site (reachable through the Tor browser) hosted on cloud infrastructure registered to an organization previously compromised by the actors. (The actors created the server leveraging their prior access to this victim.) Following the compromise and the subsequent unauthorized acquisition of victim data, the actors publicized news of their compromise (including on social media), tagging accounts of victim and media organizations, and leaking victim data on their .onion site. While this technique has traditionally been used to influence victims to pay ransoms, the FBI does not believe the objective of Pay2Key was to obtain ransom payments. Rather, the FBI assesses Pay2Key was an information operation aimed at undermining the security of Israel-based cyber infrastructure.
