The RansomHub ransomware gang is behind the latest cyberattack on oil and fuel providers large Halliburton, which disrupted the corporate’s IT methods and enterprise operations.
The assault induced widespread disruption, and BleepingComputer was advised that prospects could not generate invoices or buy orders as a result of the required methods had been down.
Halliburton disclosed the assault final Friday in an SEC submitting, stating they suffered a cyberattack on August 21, 2024, by an unauthorized occasion.
“On August 21, 2024, Halliburton Firm (the “Firm”) turned conscious that an unauthorized third occasion gained entry to sure of its methods,” learn Halliburton’s SEC submitting.
“When the Firm discovered of the difficulty, the Firm activated its cybersecurity response plan and launched an investigation internally with the help of exterior advisors to evaluate and remediate the unauthorized exercise.”
The corporate offers a quite a few providers to grease and fuel firms, together with properly development, drilling, hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and IT software program and providers. As a result of firm’s wide selection of providers, there may be a substantial amount of connectivity between them and their prospects.
Nevertheless, the corporate has not shared many particulars in regards to the assault, with a buyer within the oil and fuel business telling BleepingComputer that they’ve been left at the hours of darkness about figuring out if the assault impacted them and the best way to defend themselves.
This has induced different prospects to disconnect from Halliburton because of the ignorance being shared.
BleepingComputer has additionally been advised that some firms are working with ONG-ISAC—an company that acts as a central level of coordination and communication for bodily and cybersecurity threats in opposition to the oil and fuel business—to obtain technical details about the assault to find out in the event that they had been breached as properly.
RansomHub ransomware behind the assault
For days, there have been rumors that Halliburton suffered a RansomHub ransomware assault, with customers claiming this on Reddit and on the job layoff dialogue web site, TheLayoff, the place a partial RansomHub ransom be aware was printed.
When BleepingComputer contacted Halliburton about these claims, Halliburton mentioned they weren’t making any additional feedback.
“We aren’t commenting past what was included in our submitting. Any subsequent communications can be within the type of an 8-Ok,” Halliburton advised BleepingComputer.
Nevertheless, in an August 26 electronic mail despatched to suppliers and shared with BleepingComputer, Halliburton offered further info stating that the corporate took methods offline to guard them and is working with Mandiant to analyze the incident.
“We’re reaching out to replace you a few cybersecurity problem affecting Halliburton,” reads the letter seen by BleepingComputer.
“As quickly as we discovered of the difficulty, we activated our cybersecurity response plan and took steps to deal with it, together with (1) proactively taking sure methods offline to assist defend them, (2) partaking the help of main exterior advisors, together with Mandiant, and (3) notifying legislation enforcement.”
Additionally they acknowledged that their electronic mail methods proceed to function as they’re hosted on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. A workaround can be out there for transacting and issuing buy orders.
This electronic mail features a listing of IOCs containing file names and IP addresses related to the assault that prospects can use to detect related exercise on their community.
One in all these IOCs is for a Home windows executable named upkeep.exe, which BleepingComputer has confirmed to be a RansomHub ransomware encryptor.
After analyzing the pattern, it seems to be a more recent model than beforehand analyzed, because it incorporates a brand new “-cmd string” command-line argument, which can execute a command on the gadget earlier than encrypting information.
Supply: BleepingComputer
RansomHub
The RansomHub ransomware operation launched in February 2024, claiming it was an information theft extortion and extortion group that bought stolen information to the best bidder.
Nevertheless, quickly after, it was found that the operation additionally utilized ransomware encryptors in its double-extortion assaults, the place the menace actors breached networks, stole knowledge, after which encrypted information.
The encrypted information and the menace to leak stolen knowledge had been then used as leverage to scare firms into paying a ransom.
Symantec analyzed the ransomware encryptors and reported that they had been based mostly on the Knight ransomware encryptors, previously often known as Cyclops.
The Knight operation claimed they bought their supply code in February 2024 and shut down simply as RansomHub launched. This has made many researchers consider that RansomHub is a rebrand of the Knight ransomware operation.
Immediately, the FBI launched an advisory about RansomHub, sharing the menace actor’s techniques and warning that they breached not less than 210 victims since February.
It’s common for the FBI and CISA to publish coordinated advisories on menace actors quickly after they conduct a extremely impactful assault on important infrastructure, reminiscent of Halliburton. Nevertheless, it’s not identified if the advisory and the assault are linked.
Because the begin of the yr, RansomHub has been chargeable for quite a few high-profile assaults, together with these on American not-for-profit credit score union Patelco, the Ceremony Help drugstore chain, the Christie’s public sale home, and U.S. telecom supplier Frontier Communications.
The ransomware operation’s knowledge leak web site was additionally utilized to leak stolen knowledge belonging to Change Healthcare following the shutdown of the BlackCat and ALPHV ransomware operation.
It’s believed that after BlackCat shut down, a few of its associates moved to RansomHub, permitting them to rapidly escalate their assaults with skilled ransomware menace actors.