Symantec Threat Hunter Team published a post about evidence that an increasing number of ransomware attackers are using virtual machines (VMs) in order to run their ransomware payloads on compromised computers. The purpose of using VMs on ransomware attacks is thought to hide the malicious activities. It is stated that this method is used in order to bypass the security solutions in virtual machines and to ensure that malicious codes can be hidden in the virtual machine.
In the past, a similar attack was seen on Windows XP machines by RagnarLocker ransomware. The same method now is used in Windows 7 machines.
It is important to prevent the installation of unauthorized virtual machines in corporate networks and implement NDR solutions to capture the anomalies in the network. In addition, Symantec published these IoCs to detect;
- 2eae8e1c2e59527b8b4bb454a51b65f0ea1b0b7476e1c80b385f579328752836 – Installer
- 9f801a8d6b4801b8f120be9e5a157b0d1fc3bbf6ba11a7d202a9060e60b707d8 – runner.exe
- e5291bae18b0fa3239503ab676cacb12f58a69eb2ec1fd3d0c0702b5a29246cb – VirtualBox
- d89bd47fb457908e8d65f705f091372251bae3603f5ff59afb2436abfcf976d8 – Mountlocker
- 8f247e4149742532b8a0258afd31466f968af7b5ac01fdb7960ac8c0643d2499 – Mountlocker