Egregor ransomware could take up where Maze left off

The hackers behind a new variant of ransomware may have only just started to gain traction, security researchers have warned.

First observed on 25 September, the Egregor ransomware is said to be filling the gap left by the Maze ransomware, which ceased operations last month, according to a blog by researchers at IT security firm Digital Shadows.

In October, Egregor struck Barnes & Noble and video game producers Ubisoft and Crytek. From Barnes & Noble, Egregor hackers released two Windows Registry hives — claiming they contained highly sensitive financial data about the bookseller.

In the attack against video game company Ubisoft, Egregor claimed to have stolen source code for its “Watchdogs: Legion” title, leaking 200MB of data about in-game assets, although there was no confirmation from Ubisoft employees on the matter.

The researchers have said the new Egregor strain shares similarities with Maze, including malware signatures, their target victims being within the industrial goods & services sector, and the practice of leaking company’s sensitive data on a dark web-based “News” website.

Egregor has also had a very busy November, with 71 victims spanning across 19 different industry verticals recorded so far.

“The level of sophistication of their attacks, adaptability to infect such a broad range of victims, and [a] significant increase in their activity suggests that Egregor ransomware operators have been developing their malware for some time and are just now putting it to (malicious) use,” said Lauren Palace, an analyst at Digital Shadows.

Researchers have found that the criminals behind Egregor tend to release packets of data that are easily traceable to the victim while demanding a hefty ransom to prevent further leaks. Most of the victims, according to Digital Shadows, are clustered in the industrial goods & services sector (38%), with a vast majority of victims being US-based companies (83%).

Egregor attacks are said to have increased 240% from September 25th (15 incidents) to October 31st (51 incidents), and are up a further 43% as of November 17th, bringing the total number of incidents to 71, according to Place.

Given the sophisticated technical capabilities of Egregor hackers to hinder malware analysis, and the fact it's already targeting a large variety of organizations, Digital Shadows has warned that the group will “likely continue in the future, posing more and more of a risk to your organization”.