#CRYPTO LOCKER DANOCCT MANUAL#
If you’re stuck with manual methods, you’ll need to enable native auditing to record access activity, and create a script to alert you when events are written to the security event log (e.g. As no legitimate user activity should be associated with a honeypot file share, any activity observed should be scrutinized carefully. Instead of attempting to enable and collect native audit logs on each system, prioritize particularly sensitive areas and consider setting up a file share honeypot.Ī file share honeypot is an accessible file share that contains files that look normal or valuable, but in reality are fake. Native auditing, unfortunately, taxes monitored systems and the output is difficult to decipher. If you don’t have an automated solution to monitor file access activity, you may be forced to enable native auditing. Instructions for configuring an automated alert with Varonis are available here (login required). Configure your monitoring solution to trigger an alert when this behavior is observed. For example, if a single user account modifies 100 files within a minute, it’s a good bet something automated is going on. If file access activity is being monitored on affected files servers, these behaviors generate very large numbers of open, modify, and create events at a very rapid pace, and are fairly easy to spot with automation, providing a valuable detective control. Automated solutions can also help you go farther than eliminating global access, making it possible to achieve a true least-privilege model and eliminate manual, ineffective access-control management at the same time. If you uncover a large amount of accessible folders, consider an automated solution. Remediating these without automation, unfortunately, can be a time-consuming and risky endeavor, as it’s easy to affect normal business activity if you’re not careful. These commands can be easily combined in a batch script to identify widely accessible folders and files. dir /s (enumerates all the files readable by the user under the share).net use X: \\host\share (maps a drive to the share).
#CRYPTO LOCKER DANOCCT WINDOWS#
For example, even basic net commands from a windows cmd shell can be used to enumerate and test shares for accessibility: On file servers, these folders are known as “open shares,” if both file system and sharing permissions are accessible via a global access group.Īlthough it’s easiest to use technologies designed to find and eliminate global access groups, it is possible to spot open shares by creating a user with no group memberships, and using that account’s credentials to “scan” the file sharing environment. In addition to being easy targets for theft or misuse, these exposed data sets are very likely to be damaged in a malware attack. Groups like “Everyone,” “Authenticated Users,” and “Domain Users,” when used on data containers (like folders and SharePoint sites) can expose entire hierarchies to all users in a company. While getting to a least privilege model is not a quick fix, it’s possible to reduce exposure quickly by removing unnecessary global access groups from access control lists. In addition to offering a line of defense for malware, it will mitigate potential exposure to other attacks from both internal and external actors. Restricting access is therefore a prudent course of action, as it will limit the scope of what can be encrypted. The more files a user account has access to, the more damage malware can inflict. Mitigation Tips Prevent What’s Preventable For example, a variant known as “CTB-Locker” creates a single file in the directory where it first begins to encrypt files, named, !Decrypt-All-Files-.TXT or !Decrypt-All-Files-.BMP. Instruction file names are typically DECRYPT_INSTRUCTION.txt or DECRYPT_INSTRUCTIONS.html.Īs new variants are uncovered, information will be added to the Varonis Connect discussion on Ransomware. Finally, the malware creates a file in each affected directory linking to a web page with decryption instructions that require the user to make a payment (e.g. CryptoLocker uses an RSA 2048-bit key to encrypt the files, and renames the files by appending an extension, such as. On execution, CryptoLocker begins to scan mapped network drives that the host is connected to for folders and documents ( see affected file-types), and renames and encrypts those that it has permission to modify, as determined by the credentials of the user who executes the code. If you’re interested in reading about ransomware in general, we’ve written A Complete Guide To Ransomware that is very in-depth. “In just one hour, I’ll teach you the fundamentals of Ransomware and what you can do to protect and prepare for it.”įYI, this article is CryptoLocker specific.