The RansomHub ransomware gang is behind the latest cyberattack on oil and gasoline companies large Halliburton, which disrupted the corporate’s IT methods and enterprise operations.
The assault prompted widespread disruption, and BleepingComputer was informed that prospects could not generate invoices or buy orders as a result of the required methods have 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 problem, 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 companies to grease and gasoline corporations, together with nicely development, drilling, hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and IT software program and companies. Because of the firm’s big selection of companies, there may be quite a lot 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 gasoline trade telling BleepingComputer that they’ve been left in the dead of night about figuring out if the assault impacted them and find out how to shield themselves.
This has prompted different prospects to disconnect from Halliburton as a result of lack of understanding being shared.
BleepingComputer has additionally been informed that some corporations are working with ONG-ISAC—an company that acts as a central level of coordination and communication for bodily and cybersecurity threats towards the oil and gasoline trade—to obtain technical details about the assault to find out in the event that they have been breached as nicely.
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 word was printed.
When BleepingComputer contacted Halliburton about these claims, Halliburton stated they weren’t making any additional feedback.
“We’re not commenting past what was included in our submitting. Any subsequent communications will likely be within the type of an 8-Ok,” Halliburton informed BleepingComputer.
Nevertheless, in an August 26 electronic mail despatched to suppliers and shared with BleepingComputer, Halliburton offered further data stating that the corporate took methods offline to guard them and is working with Mandiant to research the incident.
“We’re reaching out to replace you a couple of cybersecurity problem affecting Halliburton,” reads the letter seen by BleepingComputer.
“As quickly as we discovered of the problem, we activated our cybersecurity response plan and took steps to handle it, together with (1) proactively taking sure methods offline to assist shield them, (2) partaking the help of main exterior advisors, together with Mandiant, and (3) notifying regulation enforcement.”
In addition they acknowledged that their electronic mail methods proceed to function as they’re hosted on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. A workaround can be obtainable for transacting and issuing buy orders.
This electronic mail features a checklist of IOCs containing file names and IP addresses related to the assault that prospects can use to detect comparable 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 comprises 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 a knowledge theft extortion and extortion group that offered 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 risk actors breached networks, stole information, after which encrypted information.
The encrypted information and the risk to leak stolen information have been then used as leverage to scare corporations into paying a ransom.
Symantec analyzed the ransomware encryptors and reported that they have been based mostly on the Knight ransomware encryptors, previously generally known as Cyclops.
The Knight operation claimed they offered their supply code in February 2024 and shut down simply as RansomHub launched. This has made many researchers imagine that RansomHub is a rebrand of the Knight ransomware operation.
At this time, the FBI launched an advisory about RansomHub, sharing the risk actor’s ways and warning that they breached no less than 210 victims since February.
It is not uncommon for the FBI and CISA to publish coordinated advisories on risk actors quickly after they conduct a extremely impactful assault on crucial infrastructure, reminiscent of Halliburton. Nevertheless, it isn’t identified if the advisory and the assault are linked.
For the reason that 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 Assist drugstore chain, the Christie’s public sale home, and U.S. telecom supplier Frontier Communications.
The ransomware operation’s information leak web site was additionally utilized to leak stolen information 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 shortly escalate their assaults with skilled ransomware risk actors.