Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity revealed that the darknet web site for the Snatch ransomware group was leaking information about its customers and the crime gang’s inside operations. Immediately, we’ll take a better have a look at the historical past of Snatch, its alleged founder, and their claims that everybody has confused them with a special, older ransomware group by the identical identify.

Based on 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, based mostly 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 develop into “REvil,” probably the most ruthless and rapacious Russian ransomware teams of all time.

The federal government says Snatch used a personalized ransomware variant notable for rebooting Microsoft Home windows units into Secure Mode — enabling the ransomware to avoid detection by antivirus or endpoint safety — after which encrypting recordsdata when few providers are working.

“Snatch menace actors have been noticed buying beforehand stolen information from different ransomware variants in an try and additional exploit victims into paying a ransom to keep away from having their information launched on Snatch’s extortion weblog,” the FBI/CISA alert reads. It continues:

“Previous to deploying the ransomware, Snatch menace actors have been noticed spending as much as three months on a sufferer’s system. Inside this timeframe, Snatch menace actors exploited the sufferer’s community transferring laterally throughout the sufferer’s community with RDP for the most important potential deployment of ransomware and trying to find recordsdata and folders for information exfiltration adopted by file encryption.”

New York Metropolis-based cyber intelligence agency Flashpoint stated the Snatch ransomware group was created in 2018, based mostly 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 on the spot 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 adverts defined. “Expertise in backup, improve privileges, mikicatz, community. Particulars after contacting on jabber: truniger@xmpp[.]jp.”

In at the least a few of these recruitment adverts — 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 one in every of Truniger’s identified 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].

Based on Constella Intelligence, a knowledge breach and menace actor analysis platform, a person named Semen7907 registered in 2017 on the Russian-language programming discussion board pawno[.]ru utilizing the e-mail tackle [email protected].

That very same e mail tackle was assigned to the person “Semen-7907” on the now defunct gaming web site tunngle.web, which suffered a knowledge breach in 2020. Semen-7907 registered at Tunngle from the Web tackle 31.192.175[.]63, which is in Yekaterinburg, RU.

Constella studies that [email protected] was additionally used to register an account on the on-line sport stalker[.]so with the nickname Trojan7907.

There’s a Skype person by the deal with semen7907, and which has the identify Semyon Tretyakov from Yekaterinburg, RU. Constella additionally discovered a breached document from the Russian cell telephony website tele2[.]ru, which exhibits {that a} person from Yekaterinburg registered in 2019 with the identify Semyon Sergeyvich Tretyakov and e mail tackle [email protected].

The above accounts, in addition to the e-mail tackle [email protected], have been all registered or accessed from the identical Yekaterinburg Web tackle talked about beforehand: 31.192.175.63. The Russian cell phone quantity related to that tele2[.]ru account is related to the Telegram account “Perchatka,” (“glove” in Russian).

BAD BEATS

Reached by way of Telegram, Perchatka (a.okay.a. Mr. Tretyakov) stated he was not a cybercriminal, and that he at the moment has a full-time job working in IT at a significant firm (he declined to specify which).

Offered with the knowledge gathered for this report (and extra that isn’t 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.

Nonetheless, he claims that he by no means made these posts, and that another person will need to 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 recommended somebody could have framed him, pointing to an August 2023 story at a Russian information outlet concerning the reported hack and leak of the person database from sysadmins[.]ru, allegedly by the hands of a pro-Ukrainian hacker group referred to as CyberSec.

“Not too long ago, due to the conflict in Ukraine, an enormous variety of databases have been leaked and discovering details about an individual is just not tough,” 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 achieved 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 referred to 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 need to keep broke And within the pursuit of cash
I can’t take these zeros Life is sort of a zebra –
everybody needs to be first Both the stripes are white,
or we’re transferring via the wilds I received’t waste time.”

Mr. Tretyakov stated he was not the creator of that individual rhyme, however that he has been identified to document his personal rhythms.

“Generally I make dangerous beats,” he stated. “Soundcloud.”

NEVER MIND THE DOMAIN NAME

The FBI/CISA alert on Snatch Ransomware (PDF) contains an fascinating caveat: It says Snatch really deploys ransomware on sufferer programs, however it additionally acknowledges that the present occupants of Snatch’s darkish and clear net domains name themselves Snatch Crew, and keep that they aren’t the identical folks as Snatch Ransomware from 2018.

Right here’s the fascinating bit from the FBI/CISA report:

“Since November 2021, an extortion website working underneath the identify Snatch served as a clearinghouse for information 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’ information 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 based mostly in Yekaterinburg, RU that uncovered their inside operations and Web addresses of their guests. The leaked information recommend that Snatch is one in every of a number of ransomware teams utilizing paid adverts on Google.com to trick folks into putting in malware disguised as common free software program, resembling Microsoft Groups, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Discord.

Snatch Crew claims to deal solely in stolen information — not in deploying ransomware malware to carry programs hostage.

Representatives of the Snatch Crew lately answered questions from Databreaches.web concerning the claimed discrepancy within the FBI/CISA report.

“Initially, we repeat as soon as once more that we now have nothing to do with Snatch Ransomware, we’re Safety Notification Attachment, and we now have by no means violated the phrases of the concluded transactions, as a result of our honesty and openness is the assure of our revenue,” the Snatch Crew wrote to Databreaches.web in response to questions.

However up to now the Snatch Crew has not been in a position to 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 advised Databreaches.web they didn’t even know {that a} ransomware group with that identify already existed after they initially shaped simply two years in the past.

That is tough to swallow as a result of even when they have been a separate group, they’d nonetheless have to in some way 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 choose a brand new identify and new net vacation spot?

“Snatchteam[.]cc is actually a knowledge market,” they continued. “The one factor to underline is that we’re in opposition to promoting leaked data, sticking to the concept of free entry. Completely any staff can come to us and provide data for publication. Much more, we now have heard rumors that quite a lot of ransomware groups scare their purchasers that they may put up 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 at the moment imagine stealing information after which extorting sufferer firms for cash is in some way much less evil than infecting all the sufferer’s servers and backups with ransomware.

Additionally it is possible that Snatch Crew is nicely conscious of how poorly a few of their founders coated their tracks on-line, and are hoping for a do-over on that entrance.