Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity revealed that the darknet web site for the Snatch ransomware group was leaking knowledge about its customers and the crime gang’s inner operations. Right this moment, we’ll take a more in-depth take a look at the historical past of Snatch, its alleged founder, and their claims that everybody has confused them with a unique, older ransomware group by the identical title.
In line with a September 20, 2023 joint advisory from the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Administration (CISA), Snatch was initially named Crew Truniger, primarily based 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 change into “REvil,” one of the crucial ruthless and rapacious Russian ransomware teams of all time.
The federal government says Snatch used a custom-made ransomware variant notable for rebooting Microsoft Home windows gadgets into Secure Mode — enabling the ransomware to bypass detection by antivirus or endpoint safety — after which encrypting information when few providers are operating.
“Snatch risk actors have been noticed buying beforehand stolen knowledge from different ransomware variants in an try and additional exploit victims into paying a ransom to keep away from having their knowledge launched on Snatch’s extortion weblog,” the FBI/CISA alert reads. It continues:
“Previous to deploying the ransomware, Snatch risk actors have been noticed spending as much as three months on a sufferer’s system. Inside this timeframe, Snatch risk actors exploited the sufferer’s community shifting laterally throughout the sufferer’s community with RDP for the biggest attainable deployment of ransomware and looking for information and folders for knowledge exfiltration adopted by file encryption.”
New York Metropolis-based cyber intelligence agency Flashpoint stated the Snatch ransomware group was created in 2018, primarily based 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 immediate messenger contact particulars on a number of Russian language coding boards, in addition to on Fb.
“The command requires Home windows system directors,” Truniger’s advertisements defined. “Expertise in backup, improve privileges, mikicatz, community. Particulars after contacting on jabber: truniger@xmpp[.]jp.”
In not less than a few of these recruitment advertisements — 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 considered one 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].
In line with Constella Intelligence, an information breach and risk actor analysis platform, a consumer named Semen7907 registered in 2017 on the Russian-language programming discussion board pawno[.]ru utilizing the e-mail handle tretyakov-files@yandex.ru.
That very same e-mail handle was assigned to the consumer “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 Web handle 31.192.175[.]63, which is in Yekaterinburg, RU.
Constella reviews that tretyakov-files@yandex.ru was additionally used to register an account on the on-line recreation stalker[.]so with the nickname Trojan7907.
There’s a Skype consumer by the deal with semen7907, and which has the title Semyon Tretyakov from Yekaterinburg, RU. Constella additionally discovered a breached document from the Russian cellular telephony web site tele2[.]ru, which reveals {that a} consumer from Yekaterinburg registered in 2019 with the title Semyon Sergeyvich Tretyakov and e-mail handle tretyakov-files@ya.ru.
The above accounts, in addition to the e-mail handle semen_7907@mail.ru, have been all registered or accessed from the identical Yekaterinburg Web handle talked about beforehand: 31.192.175.63. The Russian cell phone quantity related to that tele2[.]ru account is linked to the Telegram account “Perchatka,” (“glove” in Russian).
BAD BEATS
Reached through Telegram, Perchatka (a.ok.a. Mr. Tretyakov) stated he was not a cybercriminal, and that he presently has a full-time job working in IT at a significant firm (he declined to specify which).
Offered with the data gathered for this report (and extra that’s not 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.
Nevertheless, he claims that he by no means made these posts, and that another person should 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 might have framed him, pointing to an August 2023 story at a Russian information outlet concerning the reported hack and leak of the consumer database from sysadmins[.]ru, allegedly by the hands of a pro-Ukrainian hacker group known as CyberSec.
“Lately, due to the warfare in Ukraine, an enormous variety of databases have been leaked and discovering details about an individual isn’t troublesome,” Tretyakov stated. “I’ve been utilizing this login since about 2013 on all of the boards the place I register, and I don’t at all times set a powerful password. If I had executed one thing unlawful, I’d have hidden significantly 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 concerning the pursuit of a high-risk life-style on-line. A snippet of the tune goes:
“Somebody is on the display screen, somebody is on the blacklist
I activate the timer and calculate the dangers
I don’t wish to keep broke And within the pursuit of cash
I can’t take these zeros Life is sort of a zebra –
everybody desires to be first Both the stripes are white,
or we’re shifting by means of the wilds I gained’t waste time.”
Mr. Tretyakov stated he was not the writer of that individual rhyme, however that he has been recognized to document his personal rhythms.
“Typically I make dangerous 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 techniques, nevertheless it additionally acknowledges that the present occupants of Snatch’s darkish and clear net domains name themselves Snatch Crew, and preserve that they don’t seem to be the identical folks as Snatch Ransomware from 2018.
Right here’s the attention-grabbing bit from the FBI/CISA report:
“Since November 2021, an extortion web site working below the title Snatch served as a clearinghouse for knowledge exfiltrated or stolen from sufferer firms on Clearnet and TOR hosted by a bulletproof internet hosting service. In August 2023, people claiming to be related to the weblog gave a media interview claiming the weblog was not related to Snatch ransomware and “none of our targets has been attacked by Ransomware Snatch…”, regardless of a number of confirmed Snatch victims’ knowledge 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 Crew’s leaky darknet web site primarily based in Yekaterinburg, RU that uncovered their inner operations and Web addresses of their guests. The leaked knowledge counsel that Snatch is considered one of a number of ransomware teams utilizing paid advertisements on Google.com to trick folks into putting in malware disguised as standard free software program, comparable to Microsoft Groups, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Discord.
Snatch Crew claims to deal solely in stolen knowledge — not in deploying ransomware malware to carry techniques hostage.
Representatives of the Snatch Crew lately answered questions from Databreaches.web concerning the claimed discrepancy within the FBI/CISA report.
“To start with, we repeat as soon as once more that we have now nothing to do with Snatch Ransomware, we’re Safety Notification Attachment, and we have now by no means violated the phrases of the concluded transactions, as a result of our honesty and openness is the assure of our earnings,” the Snatch Crew wrote to Databreaches.web in response to questions.
However to this point the Snatch Crew has not been capable of 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 Crew members instructed Databreaches.web they didn’t even know {that a} ransomware group with that title already existed once they initially shaped simply two years in the past.
That is troublesome to swallow as a result of even when they have been a separate group, they’d nonetheless must one way or the other coordinate the switch of the Ransomware group’s domains on the clear and darkish webs. In the event that they have been hoping for a contemporary begin or separation, why not simply decide a brand new title and new net vacation spot?
“Snatchteam[.]cc is basically an information market,” they continued. “The one factor to underline is that we’re towards promoting leaked data, sticking to the thought of free entry. Completely any group can come to us and supply data for publication. Much more, we have now heard rumors that quite a lot of ransomware groups scare their purchasers that they are going to submit leaked data on our useful resource. We would not have our personal ransomware, however we’re open to cooperation on placement and monetization of dates (sic).”
Possibly Snatch Crew doesn’t want to be related to Snatch Ransomware as a result of they presently consider stealing knowledge after which extorting sufferer firms for cash is one way or the other much less evil than infecting the entire sufferer’s servers and backups with ransomware.
It’s also probably that Snatch Crew is nicely conscious of how poorly a few of their founders lined their tracks on-line, and are hoping for a do-over on that entrance.
