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U.S. and U.K. authorities have seized the darknet websites run by LockBit, a prolific and destructive ransomware group that has claimed more than 2,000 victims worldwide and extorted over $120 million in payments. Instead of listing data stolen from ransomware victims who didn’t pay, LockBit’s victim shaming website now offers free recovery tools, as well as news about arrests and criminal charges involving LockBit affiliates.
Investigators used the existing design on LockBit’s victim shaming website to feature press releases and free decryption tools.
Dubbed “Operation Cronos,” the law enforcement action involved the seizure of nearly three-dozen servers; the arrest of two alleged LockBit members; the unsealing of two indictments; the release of a free LockBit decryption tool; and the freezing of more than 200 cryptocurrency accounts thought to be tied to the gang’s activities.
LockBit members have executed attacks against thousands of victims in the United States and around the world, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). First surfacing in September 2019, the gang is estimated to have made hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in ransom demands, and extorted over $120 million in ransom payments.
LockBit operated as a ransomware-as-a-service group, wherein the ransomware gang takes care of everything from the bulletproof hosting and domains to the development and maintenance of the malware. Meanwhile, affiliates are solely responsible for finding new victims, and can reap 60 to 80 percent of any ransom amount ultimately paid to the group.
A statement on Operation Cronos from the European police agency Europol said the months-long infiltration resulted in the compromise of LockBit’s primary platform and other critical infrastructure, including the takedown of 34 servers in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, France, Switzerland, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Europol said two suspected LockBit actors were arrested in Poland and Ukraine, but no further information has been released about those detained.
The DOJ today unsealed indictments against two Russian men alleged to be active members of LockBit. The government says Russian national Artur Sungatov used LockBit ransomware against victims in manufacturing, logistics, insurance and other companies throughout the United States.
Ivan Gennadievich Kondratyev, a.k.a. “Bassterlord,” allegedly deployed LockBit against targets in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and Lebanon. Kondratyev is also charged (PDF) with three criminal counts arising from his alleged use of the Sodinokibi (aka “REvil“) ransomware variant to encrypt data, exfiltrate victim information, and extort a ransom payment from a corporate victim based in Alameda County, California.
With the indictments of Sungatov and Kondratyev, a total of five LockBit affiliates now have been officially charged. In May 2023, U.S. authorities unsealed indictments against two alleged LockBit affiliates, Mikhail “Wazawaka” Matveev and Mikhail Vasiliev.
Vasiliev, 35, of Bradford, Ontario, Canada, is in custody in Canada awaiting extradition to the United States (the complaint against Vasiliev is at this PDF). Matveev remains at large, presumably still in Russia. In January 2022, KrebsOnSecurity published Who is the Network Access Broker ‘Wazawaka,’ which followed clues from Wazawaka’s many pseudonyms and contact details on the Russian-language cybercrime forums back to a 31-year-old Mikhail Matveev from Abaza, RU.
An FBI wanted poster for Matveev.
In June 2023, Russian national Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov was charged in New Jersey for his participation in the LockBit conspiracy, including the deployment of LockBit against victims in Florida, Japan, France, and Kenya. Astamirov is currently in custody in the United States awaiting trial.
LockBit was known to have recruited affiliates that worked with multiple ransomware groups simultaneously, and it’s unclear what impact this takedown may have on competing ransomware affiliate operations. The security firm ProDaft said on Twitter/X that the infiltration of LockBit by investigators provided “in-depth visibility into each affiliate’s structures, including ties with other notorious groups such as FIN7, Wizard Spider, and EvilCorp.”
In a lengthy thread about the LockBit takedown on the Russian-language cybercrime forum XSS, one of the gang’s leaders said the FBI and the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) had infiltrated its servers using a known vulnerability in PHP, a scripting language that is widely used in Web development.
Several denizens of XSS wondered aloud why the PHP flaw was not flagged by LockBit’s vaunted “Bug Bounty” program, which promised a financial reward to affiliates who could find and quietly report any security vulnerabilities threatening to undermine LockBit’s online infrastructure.
This prompted several XSS members to start posting memes taunting the group about the security failure.
“Does it mean that the FBI provided a pentesting service to the affiliate program?,” one denizen quipped. “Or did they decide to take part in the bug bounty program? :):)”
Federal investigators also appear to be trolling LockBit members with their seizure notices. LockBit’s data leak site previously featured a countdown timer for each victim organization listed, indicating the time remaining for the victim to pay a ransom demand before their stolen files would be published online. Now, the top entry on the shaming site is a countdown timer until the public doxing of “LockBitSupp,” the unofficial spokesperson or figurehead for the LockBit gang.
“Who is LockbitSupp?” the teaser reads. “The $10m question.”
In January 2024, LockBitSupp told XSS forum members he was disappointed the FBI hadn’t offered a reward for his doxing and/or arrest, and that in response he was placing a bounty on his own head — offering $10 million to anyone who could discover his real name.
“My god, who needs me?,” LockBitSupp wrote on Jan. 22, 2024. “There is not even a reward out for me on the FBI website. By the way, I want to use this chance to increase the reward amount for a person who can tell me my full name from USD 1 million to USD 10 million. The person who will find out my name, tell it to me and explain how they were able to find it out will get USD 10 million. Please take note that when looking for criminals, the FBI uses unclear wording offering a reward of UP TO USD 10 million; this means that the FBI can pay you USD 100, because technically, it’s an amount UP TO 10 million. On the other hand, I am willing to pay USD 10 million, no more and no less.”
Mark Stockley, cybersecurity evangelist at the security firm Malwarebytes, said the NCA is obviously trolling the LockBit group and LockBitSupp.
“I don’t think this is an accident—this is how ransomware groups talk to each other,” Stockley said. “This is law enforcement taking the time to enjoy its moment, and humiliate LockBit in its own vernacular, presumably so it loses face.”
In a press conference today, the FBI said Operation Cronos included investigative assistance from the Gendarmerie-C3N in France; the State Criminal Police Office L-K-A and Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany; Fedpol and Zurich Cantonal Police in Switzerland; the National Police Agency in Japan; the Australian Federal Police; the Swedish Police Authority; the National Bureau of Investigation in Finland; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and the National Police in the Netherlands.
The Justice Department said victims targeted by LockBit should contact the FBI at https://lockbitvictims.ic3.gov/ to determine whether affected systems can be successfully decrypted. In addition, the Japanese Police, supported by Europol, have released a recovery tool designed to recover files encrypted by the LockBit 3.0 Black Ransomware.
GATOR - GCP Attack Toolkit for Offensive Research, a tool designed to aid in research and exploiting Google Cloud Environments. It offers a comprehensive range of modules tailored to support users in various attack stages, spanning from Reconnaissance to Impact.
| Resource Category | Primary Module | Command Group | Operation | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| User Authentication | auth | - | activate | Activate a Specific Authentication Method |
| - | add | Add a New Authentication Method | ||
| - | delete | Remove a Specific Authentication Method | ||
| - | list | List All Available Authentication Methods | ||
| Cloud Functions | functions | - | list | List All Deployed Cloud Functions |
| - | permissions | Display Permissions for a Specific Cloud Function | ||
| - | triggers | List All Triggers for a Specific Cloud Function | ||
| Cloud Storage | storage | buckets | list | List All Storage Buckets |
| permissions | Display Permissions for Storage Buckets | |||
| Compute Engine | compute | instances | add-ssh-key | Add SSH Key to Compute Instances |
Python 3.11 or newer should be installed. You can verify your Python version with the following command:
FreshRSS 
python --versiongit clone https://github.com/anrbn/GATOR.git
cd GATOR
python setup.py installpip install gator-redHave a look at the GATOR Documentation for an explained guide on using GATOR and it's module!
If you encounter any problems with this tool, I encourage you to let me know. Here are the steps to report an issue:
Check Existing Issues: Before reporting a new issue, please check the existing issues in this repository. Your issue might have already been reported and possibly even resolved.
Create a New Issue: If your problem hasn't been reported, please create a new issue in the GitHub repository. Click the Issues tab and then click New Issue.
Describe the Issue: When creating a new issue, please provide as much information as possible. Include a clear and descriptive title, explain the problem in detail, and provide steps to reproduce the issue if possible. Including the version of the tool you're using and your operating system can also be helpful.
Submit the Issue: After you've filled out all the necessary information, click Submit new issue.
Your feedback is important, and will help improve the tool. I appreciate your contribution!
I'll be reviewing reported issues on a regular basis and try to reproduce the issue based on your description and will communicate with you for further information if necessary. Once I understand the issue, I'll work on a fix.
Please note that resolving an issue may take some time depending on its complexity. I appreciate your patience and understanding.
I warmly welcome and appreciate contributions from the community! If you're interested in contributing on any existing or new modules, feel free to submit a pull request (PR) with any new/existing modules or features you'd like to add.
Once you've submitted a PR, I'll review it as soon as I can. I might request some changes or improvements before merging your PR. Your contributions play a crucial role in making the tool better, and I'm excited to see what you'll bring to the project!
Thank you for considering contributing to the project.
If you have any questions regarding the tool or any of its modules, please check out the documentation first. I've tried to provide clear, comprehensive information related to all of its modules. If however your query is not yet solved or you have a different question altogether please don't hesitate to reach out to me via Twitter or LinkedIn. I'm always happy to help and provide support. :)
Gato, or GitHub Attack Toolkit, is an enumeration and attack tool that allows both blue teamers and offensive security practitioners to evaluate the blast radius of a compromised personal access token within a GitHub organization.
The tool also allows searching for and thoroughly enumerating public repositories that utilize self-hosted runners. GitHub recommends that self-hosted runners only be utilized for private repositories, however, there are thousands of organizations that utilize self-hosted runners.
Gato supports OS X and Linux with at least Python 3.7.
In order to install the tool, simply clone the repository and use pip install. We recommend performing this within a virtual environment.
git clone https://github.com/praetorian-inc/gato
cd gato
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install .
Gato also requires that git version 2.27 or above is installed and on the system's PATH. In order to run the fork PR attack module, sed must also be installed and present on the system's path.
After installing the tool, it can be launched by running gato or praetorian-gato.
We recommend viewing the parameters for the base tool using gato -h, and the parameters for each of the tool's modules by running the following:
gato search -hgato enum -hgato attack -hThe tool requires a GitHub classic PAT in order to function. To create one, log in to GitHub and go to GitHub Developer Settings and select Generate New Token and then Generate new token (classic).
After creating this token set the GH_TOKEN environment variable within your shell by running export GH_TOKEN=<YOUR_CREATED_TOKEN>. Alternatively, store the token within a secure password manager and enter it when the application prompts you.
For troubleshooting and additional details, such as installing in developer mode or running unit tests, please see the wiki.
Please see the wiki. for detailed documentation, as well as OpSec considerations for the tool's various modules!
If you believe you have identified a bug within the software, please open an issue containing the tool's output, along with the actions you were trying to conduct.
If you are unsure if the behavior is a bug, use the discussions section instead!
Contributions are welcome! Please review our design methodology and coding standards before working on a new feature!
Additionally, if you are proposing significant changes to the tool, please open an issue open an issue to start a conversation about the motivation for the changes.
