Today it was discovered that an unknown actor had managed to exploit a vulnerability in Lockbit’s PHPMyAdmin instance (on their console onion site). Apparently they were running PHP 8.1.2 which is vulnerable to an RCE CVE-2024-4577. Which uhh… lol? It probably would have been prudent to do a post-paid penetration test on their own infrastructure at some point.
Further compounding the unfortunate situation, the actor was able to dump their database. This contained, as stated by Bleeping Computer, a number of tables such as bitcoin addresses, data about their build system such as bespoke builds for affiliates, A ‘chats’ table containing negotiation messages, which we’ll go through in a later post. And finally, of interest today, the usernames and passwords of LockBit agents using the console.
Of special importance, making our work markedly easier, these passwords were not hashed. Which sure is a choice, as an organization that performs ransomware attacks.
The vast majority of the passwords in this table as reasonably secure; it’s not solely hilariously weak credentials, but there still are a number that display poor security hygiene.
The weak passwords
Before going into my standard analysis, I’ll list off all of the weak passwords in question, and then we’ll go through the statistics of the whole set. The fun to highlight passwords:
The LockBit ransomware gang has suffered a data breach after its dark web affiliate panels were defaced and replaced with a message linking to a MySQL database dump.
All of the ransomware gang's admin panels now state. "Don't do crime CRIME IS BAD xoxo from Prague," with a link to download a "paneldb_dump.zip."
LockBit dark web site defaced with link to database
As first spotted by the threat actor, Rey, this archive contains a SQL file dumped from the site affiliate panel's MySQL database.
From analysis by BleepingComputer, this database contains twenty tables, with some more interesting than others, including:
A 'btc_addresses' table that contains 59,975 unique bitcoin addresses.
A 'builds' table contains the individual builds created by affiliates for attacks. Table rows contain the public keys, but no private keys, unfortunately. The targeted companies' names are also listed for some of the builds.
A 'builds_configurations' table contains the different configurations used for each build, such as which ESXi servers to skip or files to encrypt.
A 'chats' table is very interesting as it contains 4,442 negotiation messages between the ransomware operation and victims from December 19th to April 29th.
Affiliate panel 'chats' table
Affiliate panel 'chats' table
A 'users' table lists 75 admins and affiliates who had access to the affiliate panel, with Michael Gillespie spotting that passwords were stored in plaintext. Examples of some of the plaintext passwords are 'Weekendlover69, 'MovingBricks69420', and 'Lockbitproud231'.
In a Tox conversation with Rey, the LockBit operator known as 'LockBitSupp' confirmed the breach, stating that no private keys were leaked or data lost.
Based on the MySQL dump generation time and the last date record in the negotiation chats table , the database appears to have been dumped at some point on April 29th, 2025.
It's unclear who carried out the breach and how it was done, but the defacement message matches the one used in a recent breach of Everest ransomware's dark web site, suggesting a possible link.
Malware Analysis Report - LockBit Ransomware v4.0
In this blog post, I’m going over my analysis for the latest variant of LockBit ransomware - version 4.0. Throughout this blog, I’ll walk through all the malicious functionalities discovered, complete with explanations and IDA screenshots to show my reverse engineering process step by step. This new version of LockBit 4.0 implements a hybrid-cryptography approach, combining Curve25519 with XChaCha20 for its file encryption scheme.
This version shares similarities with the older LockBit Green variant that is derived from Conti ransomware. While the multi-threading architecture seems more streamlined than previous versions, it still delivers an encryption speed that outpaces most other ransomware families.
As always, LockBit is still my most favorite malware to look at, and I certainly enjoyed doing a deep dive to understand how this version works.
Key Takeaways The intrusion began with the exploitation of CVE-2023-22527 on an exposed Windows Confluence server, ultimately leading to the deployment of LockBit ransomware across the environment.…
A key Russian cybercrime syndicate responsible for aiding merciless ransomware attacks around the world has been targeted by new UK sanctions.
Key Takeaways This intrusion began with the download and execution of a Cobalt Strike beacon that impersonated a Windows Media Configuration Utility. The threat actor used Rclone to exfiltrate data…
The LockBit ransomware group will soon launch a comeback with the planned release of LockBit 4.0 in February 2025, Cyble
Threat actors exploit Amazon S3 in ransomware attacks, using AWS credentials for data theft.
Sixteen individuals who were part of Evil Corp, once believed to be the most significant cybercrime threat in the world, have been sanctioned in the UK, with their links to the Russian state and other prolific ransomware groups, including LockBit, exposed.
Sanctions have also been imposed by Australia and the US, who have unsealed an indictment against a key member of the group.
These are some of the results of the third phase of Operation Cronos, a long-running collective effort of law enforcement authorities from 12 countries, Europol and Eurojust, who joined forces to effectively disrupt at all levels the criminal operations of the LockBit ransomware group. These actions follow the massive disruption of LockBit infrastructure in February 2024, as well as the large series of sanctions and operational actions that took place against LockBit administrators in May and subsequent months.
Between 2021 and 2023, LockBit was the most widely employed ransomware variant globally with a notable number of victims claimed on its data leak site. Lockbit operated on the ransom as a service model. The core group sold access to affiliates and received portions of the collected ransom payments. Entities deploying LockBit ransomware attacks had targeted organisations of various sizes spanning critical infrastructure sectors such as financial services, food and agriculture, education, energy, government and emergency services, healthcare, manufacturing and transportation. Reflecting the considerable number of independent affiliates involved, LockBit ransomware attacks display significant variation in observed tactics, techniques and procedures.
#2024 #EN #Eurojust #LockBit #busted #disrupt #europol
The agency said at least 43 companies have been attacked by the group in the U.S., South America, India, Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere.
Jon DiMaggio used sockpuppet accounts, then his own identity, to infiltrate LockBit and gain the trust of its alleged admin, Dmitry Khoroshev.
Two foreign nationals pleaded guilty today to participating in the LockBit ransomware group—at various times the most prolific ransomware variant in the world—and to deploying LockBit attacks against victims in the United States and worldwide.
Actors are masquerading as hacktivists targeting AI-centric communities with commodity malware and customized LockBit payloads.
The new Brain Cipher ransomware operation has begun targeting organizations worldwide, gaining media attention for a recent attack on Indonesia's temporary National Data Center.
Recently-disrupted LockBit ransomware group, in a desperate attempt to make a comeback, claimed this week that it had hit the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. Except, the rumor has been quashed.
The FBI is informing victims of LockBit ransomware it has obtained over 7K decryption keys that could allow some of them to decrypt their data
The report shares statistics and observations from incident response practice in 2023, analyzes trends and gives cybersecurity recommendations.
#Cybersecurity #Incident #Internal #LockBit #Ransomware #Security #Statistics #Threats #response #services
The Hôpital de Cannes - Simone Veil (CHC-SV) in France announced it received a ransom demand from the Lockbit 3.0 ransomware gang, saying they refuse to pay the ransom.
