Researchers say a second family of ransomware has been growing in usage for attack attempts that exploit the critical vulnerability in Apache Log4j, including in the U.S. and Europe. VentureBeat reports: A number of researchers, including at cybersecurity giant Sophos, have now said they’ve observed the attempted deployment of a ransomware family known as TellYouThePass. Researchers have described TellYouThePass as an older and largely inactive ransomware family — which has been revived following the discovery of the vulnerability in the widely used Log4j logging software. TellYouThePass is the second family of ransomware that’s been observed to exploit the vulnerability in Log4j, known as Log4Shell, joining the Khonsari ransomware, according to researchers.
While previous reports indicated that TellYouThePass was mainly being directed against targets in China, researchers at Sophos told VentureBeat that they’ve observed the attempted delivery of TellYouThePass ransomware both inside and outside of China — including in the U.S. and Europe. “Systems in China were targeted, as well as some hosted in Amazon and Google cloud services in the U.S. and at several sites in Europe,” said Sean Gallagher, a senior threat researcher at Sophos Labs, in an email to VentureBeat on Tuesday. Sophos detected attempts to deliver TellYouThePass payloads by utilizing the Log4j vulnerability on December 17 and December 18, Gallagher said. TellYouThePass has versions that run on either Linux or Windows, “and has a history of exploiting high-profile vulnerabilities like EternalBlue,” said Andrew Brandt, a threat researcher at Sophos, in an email. The Linux version is capable of stealing Secure Socket Shell (SSH) keys and can perform lateral movement, Brandt said. Sophos initially disclosed its detection of TellYouThePass ransomware in a December 20 blog post.
The first report of TellYouThePass ransomware exploiting the Log4j vulnerability appears to have come from the head of Chinese cybersecurity group KnownSec 404 Team on December 12. The attempted deployment of TellYouThePass in conjunction with Log4Shell was subsequently confirmed by additional researchers, according to researcher community Curated Intelligence. In a blog post Tuesday, Curated Intelligence said its members can now confirm that TellYouThePass has been seen exploiting the vulnerability “in the wild to target both Windows and Linux systems.” TellYouThePass had most recently been observed in July 2020, Curated Intelligence said. It joins Khonsari, a new family of ransomware identified in connection with exploits of the Log4j vulnerability.
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