Cyber Threat Report: 'Investigating New INC Ransom Group Activity'

This blog post from huntress discusses the ransomware group known as 'INC', breaking down the stages of an attack day by day. The Huntress team conducted an investigation into an 'INC' ransomware attack, revealing that the initial attack phases began a week prior to the encryption event. INC used short connections, compromised credentials, and native tools (LOLBINs) for data collection and staging, eventually leading to data exfiltration and file encryption. The post provides indicators of compromise (IoCs) and MITRE ATT&CK mappings based on their observed activity.

Privileged Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to privileged accounts, including SYSTEM and root.

Multi-factor Authentication

Use two or more pieces of evidence to authenticate to a system; such as username and password in addition to a token from a physical smart card or token generator.

User Training

Train users to be aware of access or manipulation attempts by an adversary to reduce the risk of successful spearphishing, social engineering, and other techniques that involve user interaction.

Limit Access to Resource Over Network

Prevent access to file shares, remote access to systems, unnecessary services. Mechanisms to limit access may include use of network concentrators, RDP gateways, etc.

Disable or Remove Feature or Program

Remove or deny access to unnecessary and potentially vulnerable software to prevent abuse by adversaries.

Network Segmentation

Architect sections of the network to isolate critical systems, functions, or resources. Use physical and logical segmentation to prevent access to potentially sensitive systems and information. Use a DMZ to contain any internet-facing services...

User Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts.

Audit

Perform audits or scans of systems, permissions, insecure software, insecure configurations, etc. to identify potential weaknesses.

Operating System Configuration

Make configuration changes related to the operating system or a common feature of the operating system that result in system hardening against techniques.

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Use capabilities to prevent suspicious behavior patterns from occurring on endpoint systems. This could include suspicious process, file, API call, etc. behavior.

Execution Prevention

Block execution of code on a system through application control, and/or script blocking.

Code Signing

Enforce binary and application integrity with digital signature verification to prevent untrusted code from executing.

Antivirus/Antimalware

Use signatures or heuristics to detect malicious software.

Password Policies

Set and enforce secure password policies for accounts.

Credential Access Protection

Use capabilities to prevent successful credential access by adversaries; including blocking forms of credential dumping.

Privileged Process Integrity

Protect processes with high privileges that can be used to interact with critical system components through use of protected process light, anti-process injection defenses, or other process integrity enforcement measures.

Restrict Web-Based Content

Restrict use of certain websites, block downloads/attachments, block Javascript, restrict browser extensions, etc.

Filter Network Traffic

Use network appliances to filter ingress or egress traffic and perform protocol-based filtering. Configure software on endpoints to filter network traffic.