Rewterz Threat Alert – Powerful Conti Ransomware

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

A new ransomware family packs multiple unique features, including to improve performance and give its operators the option to only target networked SMB shares. Dubbed Conti, the malware improves performance through the use of “up to 32 simultaneous encryption efforts,” and is likely directly controlled by its operators, which means that it can target network-based resources and skip local files, similarly with what the Sodinokibi ransomware can do. the new ransomware abuses the Windows Restart Manager to close applications that lock certain files, thus making sure it can encrypt all the data it wants. The notable effect of this capability is that it can cause targeted damage in an environment in a method that could frustrate incident response activities. A successful attack may have destruction that’s limited to the shares of a server that has no Internet capability, but where there is no evidence of similar destruction elsewhere in the environment.

Impact

File encryption

Indicators of Compromise

MD5

• b7b5e1253710d8927cbe07d52d2d2e10

SHA-256

• eae876886f19ba384f55778634a35a1d975414e83f22f6111e3e792f706301fe

SHA1

• 596f1fdb5a3de40cccfe1d8183692928b94b8afb

Remediation

• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Search for IOCs in the environment.