Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity revealed that the darknet web site for the Snatch ransomware group was leaking information about its customers and the crime gang’s inner operations. Today, we’ll take a better take a look at the historical past of Snatch, its alleged founder, and their claims that everybody has confused them with a distinct, older ransomware group by the identical title.
According to a September 20, 2023 joint advisory from the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA), Snatch was initially named Team Truniger, based mostly on the nickname of the group’s founder and organizer — Truniger.
The FBI/CISA report says Truniger beforehand operated as an affiliate of GandCrab, an early ransomware-as-a-service providing that closed up store after a number of years and claims to have extorted greater than $2 billion from victims. GandCrab dissolved in July 2019, and is assumed to have grow to be “REvil,” one of the ruthless and rapacious Russian ransomware teams of all time.
The authorities says Snatch used a personalized ransomware variant notable for rebooting Microsoft Windows gadgets into Safe Mode — enabling the ransomware to bypass detection by antivirus or endpoint safety — after which encrypting recordsdata when few companies are operating.
“Snatch threat actors have been observed purchasing previously stolen data from other ransomware variants in an attempt to further exploit victims into paying a ransom to avoid having their data released on Snatch’s extortion blog,” the FBI/CISA alert reads. It continues:
“Prior to deploying the ransomware, Snatch threat actors were observed spending up to three months on a victim’s system. Within this timeframe, Snatch threat actors exploited the victim’s network moving laterally across the victim’s network with RDP for the largest possible deployment of ransomware and searching for files and folders for data exfiltration followed by file encryption.”
New York City-based cyber intelligence agency Flashpoint stated the Snatch ransomware group was created in 2018, based mostly on Truniger’s recruitment each on Russian language cybercrime boards and public Russian programming boards. Flashpoint stated Truniger recruited “pen testers” for a brand new, then-unnamed cybercrime group, by posting their personal Jabber on the spot messenger contact particulars on a number of Russian language coding boards, in addition to on Facebook.
“The command requires Windows system administrators,” Truniger’s adverts defined. “Experience in backup, increase privileges, mikicatz, network. Details after contacting on jabber: truniger@xmpp[.]jp.”
In not less than a few of these recruitment adverts — like one in 2018 on the discussion board sysadmins[.]ru –the username selling Truniger’s contact data was Semen7907. In April 2020, Truniger was banned from two of the highest Russian cybercrime boards, the place members from each boards confirmed that Semen7907 was one in every of Truniger’s recognized aliases.
[SIDE NOTE: Truniger was banned because he purchased credentials to a company from a network access broker on the dark web, and although he promised to share a certain percentage of whatever ransom amount Truniger’s group extracted from the victim, Truniger paid the access broker just a few hundred dollars off of a six-figure ransom].
According to Constella Intelligence, an information breach and menace actor analysis platform, a person named Semen7907 registered in 2017 on the Russian-language programming discussion board pawno[.]ru utilizing the e-mail deal with tretyakov-files@yandex.ru.
That similar e mail deal with was assigned to the person “Semen-7907” on the now defunct gaming web site tunngle.web, which suffered an information breach in 2020. Semen-7907 registered at Tunngle from the Internet deal with 31.192.175[.]63, which is in Yekaterinburg, RU.
Constella studies that tretyakov-files@yandex.ru was additionally used to register an account on the on-line recreation stalker[.]so with the nickname Trojan7907.
There is a Skype person by the deal with semen7907, and which has the title Semyon Tretyakov from Yekaterinburg, RU. Constella additionally discovered a breached file from the Russian cell telephony website tele2[.]ru, which exhibits {that a} person from Yekaterinburg registered in 2019 with the title Semyon Sergeyvich Tretyakov and e mail deal with tretyakov-files@ya.ru.
The above accounts, in addition to the e-mail deal with semen_7907@mail.ru, have been all registered or accessed from the identical Yekaterinburg Internet deal with talked about beforehand: 31.192.175.63. The Russian cell phone quantity related to that tele2[.]ru account is related to the Telegram account “Perchatka,” (“glove” in Russian).
BAD BEATS
Reached by way of Telegram, Perchatka (a.ok.a. Mr. Tretyakov) stated he was not a cybercriminal, and that he at present has a full-time job working in IT at a serious firm (he declined to specify which).
Presented with the data gathered for this report (and extra that isn’t printed right here), Mr. Tretyakov acknowledged that Semen7907 was his account on sysadmins[.]ru, the exact same account Truniger used to recruit hackers for the Snatch Ransomware group again in 2018.
However, he claims that he by no means made these posts, and that another person will need to have assumed management over his sysadmins[.]ru account and posted as him. Mr. Tretyakov stated that KrebsOnSecurity’s outreach this week was the primary time he grew to become conscious that his sysadmins[.]ru account was used with out his permission.
Mr. Tretyakov advised somebody could have framed him, pointing to an August 2023 story at a Russian information outlet in regards to the reported hack and leak of the person database from sysadmins[.]ru, allegedly by the hands of a pro-Ukrainian hacker group known as CyberSec.
“Recently, because of the war in Ukraine, a huge number of databases have been leaked and finding information about a person is not difficult,” Tretyakov stated. “I’ve been using this login since about 2013 on all the forums where I register, and I don’t always set a strong password. If I had done something illegal, I would have hidden much better :D.”
[For the record, KrebsOnSecurity does not generally find this to be the case, as the ongoing Breadcrumbs series will attest.]
A Semyon Sergeyvich Tretyakov is listed because the composer of a Russian-language rap tune known as “Parallels,” which appears to be in regards to the pursuit of a high-risk way of life on-line. A snippet of the tune goes:
“Someone is on the screen, someone is on the blacklist
I turn on the timer and calculate the risks
I don’t want to stay broke And in the pursuit of money
I can’t take these zeros Life is like a zebra –
everyone wants to be first Either the stripes are white,
or we’re moving through the wilds I won’t waste time.”
Mr. Tretyakov stated he was not the creator of that exact rhyme, however that he has been recognized to file his personal rhythms.
“Sometimes I make bad beats,” he stated. “Soundcloud.”
NEVER MIND THE DOMAIN NAME
The FBI/CISA alert on Snatch Ransomware (PDF) consists of an attention-grabbing caveat: It says Snatch truly deploys ransomware on sufferer methods, but it surely additionally acknowledges that the present occupants of Snatch’s darkish and clear internet domains name themselves Snatch Team, and preserve that they don’t seem to be the identical individuals as Snatch Ransomware from 2018.
Here’s the attention-grabbing bit from the FBI/CISA report:
“Since November 2021, an extortion site operating under the name Snatch served as a clearinghouse for data exfiltrated or stolen from victim companies on Clearnet and TOR hosted by a bulletproof hosting service. In August 2023, individuals claiming to be associated with the blog gave a media interview claiming the blog was not associated with Snatch ransomware and “none of our targets has been attacked by Ransomware Snatch…”, regardless of a number of confirmed Snatch victims’ information showing on the weblog alongside victims related to different ransomware teams, notably Nokoyawa and Conti.”
Avid readers will recall a narrative right here earlier this week about Snatch Team’s leaky darknet web site based mostly in Yekaterinburg, RU that uncovered their inner operations and Internet addresses of their guests. The leaked information recommend that Snatch is one in every of a number of ransomware teams utilizing paid adverts on Google.com to trick individuals into putting in malware disguised as standard free software program, akin to Microsoft Teams, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Discord.
Snatch Team claims to deal solely in stolen information — not in deploying ransomware malware to carry methods hostage.
Representatives of the Snatch Team lately answered questions from Databreaches.web in regards to the claimed discrepancy within the FBI/CISA report.
“First of all, we repeat once again that we have nothing to do with Snatch Ransomware, we are Security Notification Attachment, and we have never violated the terms of the concluded transactions, because our honesty and openness is the guarantee of our income,” the Snatch Team wrote to Databreaches.web in response to questions.
But up to now the Snatch Team has not been in a position to clarify why it’s utilizing the exact same domains that the Snatch ransomware group used?
Their declare is much more unbelievable as a result of the Snatch Team members informed Databreaches.web they didn’t even know {that a} ransomware group with that title already existed after they initially shaped simply two years in the past.
This is tough to swallow as a result of even when they have been a separate group, they’d nonetheless have to by some means coordinate the switch of the Ransomware group’s domains on the clear and darkish webs. If they have been hoping for a recent begin or separation, why not simply decide a brand new title and new internet vacation spot?
“Snatchteam[.]cc is essentially a data market,” they continued. “The only thing to underline is that we are against selling leaked information, sticking to the idea of free access. Absolutely any team can come to us and offer information for publication. Even more, we have heard rumors that a number of ransomware teams scare their clients that they will post leaked information on our resource. We do not have our own ransomware, but we are open to cooperation on placement and monetization of dates (sic).”
Maybe Snatch Team doesn’t want to be related to Snatch Ransomware as a result of they at present consider stealing information after which extorting sufferer firms for cash is by some means much less evil than infecting all the sufferer’s servers and backups with ransomware.
It can be doubtless that Snatch Team is effectively conscious of how poorly a few of their founders coated their tracks on-line, and are hoping for a do-over on that entrance.