Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
Written by
Brianna Leddy
Director of Analyst Operations
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06
Sep 2021
The deployment of ransomware is the endgame of a cyber-attack. A threat actor must have accomplished several previous steps – including lateral movement and privilege escalation – to reach this final position. The ability to detect and counter the early moves is therefore just as important as detecting the encryption itself.
Attackers are using diverse strategies – such as ‘Living off the Land’ and carefully crafting their command and control (C2) – to blend in with normal network traffic and evade traditional security defenses. The analysis below examines the Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) used by many ransomware actors by unpacking a compromise which occurred at a defense contractor in Canada.
Phases of a ransomware attack
Figure 1: Timeline of the attack.
The opening: Initial access to privileged account
The first indicator of compromise was a login on a server with an unusual credential, followed by unusual admin activity. The attacker may have gained access to the username and password in a number of ways, from credential stuffing to buying them on the Dark Web. As the attacker had privileged access from the get-go, there was no need for privilege escalation.
Lateral movement
Two days later, the attacker began to spread from the initial server. The compromised server began to send out unusual Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) commands.
It began remotely controlling four other devices – authenticating on them with a single admin credential. One of the destinations was a domain controller (DC), another was a backup server.
By using WMI – a common admin tool – for lateral movement, the attacker opted to ‘live off the land’ rather than introduce a new lateral movement tool, aiming to remain unnoticed by the company’s security stack. The unusual use of WMI was picked up by Darktrace and the timings of the unusual WMI connections were pieced together by Cyber AI Analyst.
Models:
New or Uncommon WMI Activity
AI Analyst / Extensive Chain of Administrative Connections
Establish C2
The four devices then connected to the IP 185.250.151[.]172. Three of them, including the DC and backup server, established SSL beacons to the IP using the dynamic DNS domain goog1e.ezua[.]com.
The C2 endpoints had very little open-source intelligence (OSINT) available, but it seems that a Cobalt Strike-style script had used the endpoint in the past. This suggests complex tooling, as the attacker used dynamic SSL and spoofed Google to mask their beaconing.
Interestingly, through the entirety of the attack, only these three devices used SSL connections for beaconing, while later C2 occurred over unencrypted protocols. It appears these three critical devices were treated differently to the other infected devices on the network.
Models:
Immediate breach of Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device, then several model breaches involving beaconing and SSL to dynamic DNS. (Domain Controller DynDNS SSL or HTTP was particularly specific to this activity.)
The middle game: Internal reconnaissance and further lateral movement
The attack chain took the form of two cycles of lateral movement, followed by establishing C2 at the newly controlled destinations.
Figure 2: Observed chain of lateral movement and C2.
So, after establishing C2, the DC made WMI requests to 20 further IPs over an extended period. It also scanned 234 IPs via ICMP pings, presumably in an attempt to find more hosts.
Many of these were eventually found with ransom notes, in particular when the targeted devices were hypervisors. The ransomware was likely deployed with remote commands via WMI.
Models:
AI Analyst / Suspicious Chain of Administrative Connections (from the initial server to the DC to the hypervisor)
AI Analyst / Extensive Suspicious WMI Activity (from the DC)
Device / ICMP Address Scan, Scanning of Multiple Devices AI Analyst incident (from the DC)
Further C2
As the second stage of lateral movement stopped, a second stage of unencrypted C2 was seen from five new devices. Each started with GET requests to the IP seen in the SSL C2 (185.250.151[.]172), which used the spoofed hostname google[.]com.
Activity started on each device with HTTP requests for a URI ending in .png, before a more consistent beaconing to the URI /books/. Eventually, the devices made POST requests to the URI /ebooks/?k= (a unique identifier for each device). All this appears to be a way of concealing a C2 beacon in what looks like plausible traffic to Google.
In this way, by encrypting some C2 connections with SSL to a Dynamic DNS domain, while crafting other unencrypted HTTP to look like traffic to google[.]com, the attacker managed to operate undetected by the company’s antivirus tools.
Darktrace identified this anomalous activity and generated a large number of external connectivity model breaches.
Models:
Eight breaches of Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to New Endpoint from the affected devices
Accomplish mission: Checkmate
Finally, the attacker deployed ransomware. In the ransom note, they stated that sensitive information had been exfiltrated and would be leaked if the company did not pay.
However, this was a lie. Darktrace confirmed that no data had been exfiltrated, as the C2 communications had sent far too little data. Lying about data exfiltration in order to extort a ransom is a common tactic for attackers, and visibility is crucial to determine whether a threat actor is bluffing.
In addition, Antigena – Darktrace’s Autonomous Response technology – blocked an internal download from one of the servers compromised in the first round of lateral movement, because it was an unusual incoming data volume for the client device. This was most likely the attacker attempting to transfer data in preparation for the end goal, so the block may have prevented this data from being moved for exfiltration.
Figure 3: Antigena model breach.
Figure 4: Device is blocked from SMB communication with the compromised server three seconds later.
Models:
Unusual Incoming Data Volume
High Volume Server Data Transfer
Unfortunately, Antigena was not active on the majority of the devices involved in the incident. If in active mode, Antigena would have stopped the early stages of this activity, including the unusual administrative logins and beaconing. The customer is now working to fully configure Antigena, so they benefit from 24/7 Autonomous Response.
Cyber AI Analyst investigates
Darktrace’s AI spotted and reported on beaconing from several devices including the DC, which was the highest scoring device for unusual behavior at the time of the activity. It condensed this information into three incidents – ‘Possible SSL Command and Control’, ‘Extensive Suspicious Remote WMI Activity’, and ‘Scanning of Remote Devices’.
Crucially, Cyber AI Analyst not only summarized the admin activity from the DC but also linked it back to the first device through an unusual chain of administrative connections.
Figure 5: Cyber AI Analyst incident showing a suspicious chain of administrative connections linking the first device in the chain of connections to a hypervisor where a ransom note was found via the compromised DC, saving valuable time in the investigation. It also highlights the credential common to all of the lateral movement connections.
Finding lateral movement chains manually is a laborious process well suited to AI. In this case, it enabled the security team to quickly trace back to the device which was the likely source of the attack and find the common credential in the connections.
Play the game like a machine
To get the full picture of a ransomware attack, it is important to look beyond the final encryption to previous phases of the kill chain. In the attack above, the encryption itself did not generate network traffic, so detecting the intrusion at its early stages was vital.
Despite the attacker ‘Living off the Land’ and using WMI with a compromised admin credential, as well as spoofing the common hostname google[.]com for C2 and applying dynamic DNS for SSL connections, Darktrace was able to identify all the stages of the attack and immediately piece them together into a meaningful security narrative. This would have been almost impossible for a human analyst to achieve without labor-intensive checking of the timings of individual connections.
With ransomware infections becoming faster and more frequent, with the threat of offensive AI looming closer and the Dark Web marketplace thriving, with security teams drowning under false positives and no time left on the clock, AI is now an essential part of any security solution. The board is set, the time is ticking, the stakes are higher than ever. Your move.
Thanks to Darktrace analyst Daniel Gentle for his insights on the above threat find.
IoCs:
IoCComment185.250.151[.]172IP address used for both HTTP and SSL C2goog1e.ezua[.]comDynamic DNS Hostname used for SSL C2
Darktrace model detections:
AI Analyst models:
Extensive Suspicious WMI Activity
Suspicious Chain of Administrative Connections
Scanning of Multiple Devices
Possible SSL Command and Control
Meta model:
Device / Large Number of model breaches
External connectivity models:
Anonymous Server Activity / Domain Controller DynDNS SSL or HTTP
Compromise / Suspicious TLS Beaconing to Rare External
Compromise / Beaconing Activity To External Rare
Compromise / SSL to DynDNS
Anomalous Server Activity / External Activity from Critical Network Device
Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase
Compromise / Suspicious Beaconing Behaviour
Compromise / HTTP Beaconing to New Endpoint
Internal activity models:
Device / New or Uncommon WMI Activity
User / New Admin Credentials on Client
Device / ICMP Address Scan
Anomalous Connection / Unusual Incoming Data Volume
Unusual Activity / High Volume Server Data Transfer
Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
Darktrace researchers observed threat actors exploiting reports of Venezuelan President Maduro’s arrest to deliver backdoor malware. Attackers often use ongoing world events make their malicious content appear more credible, increasingly the likelihood of a successful attack.
Under Medusa’s Gaze: How Darktrace Uncovers RMM Abuse in Ransomware Campaigns
Medusa ransomware increasingly exploits remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools for persistence, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. This blog explores Medusa’s tactics, real-world detections, and how anomaly-based solutions with Autonomous Response can stop attacks.
React2Shell: How Opportunist Attackers Exploited CVE-2025-55182 Within Hours
Darktrace observed opportunistic exploitation of the React2Shell vulnerability within minutes of honeypot deployment. Attackers leveraged shell scripts, HTTP beaconing, and cryptomining activity, highlighting rapid adaptation to unpatched flaws.
Threat actors frequently exploit ongoing world events to trick users into opening and executing malicious files. Darktrace security researchers recently identified a threat group using reports around the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolàs Maduro on January 3, 2025, as a lure to deliver backdoor malware.
Technical Analysis
While the exact initial access method is unknown, it is likely that a spear-phishing email was sent to victims, containing a zip archive titled “US now deciding what’s next for Venezuela.zip”. This file included an executable named “Maduro to be taken to New York.exe” and a dynamic-link library (DLL), “kugou.dll”.
The binary “Maduro to be taken to New York.exe” is a legitimate binary (albeit with an expired signature) related to KuGou, a Chinese streaming platform. Its function is to load the DLL “kugou.dll” via DLL search order. In this instance, the expected DLL has been replaced with a malicious one with the same name to load it.
Figure 1: DLL called with LoadLibraryW.
Once the DLL is executed, a directory is created C:\ProgramData\Technology360NB with the DLL copied into the directory along with the executable, renamed as “DataTechnology.exe”. A registry key is created for persistence in “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Lite360” to run DataTechnology.exe --DATA on log on.
Figure 2. Registry key added for persistence.
Figure 3: Folder “Technology360NB” created.
During execution, a dialog box appears with the caption “Please restart your computer and try again, or contact the original author.”
Figure 4. Message box prompting user to restart.
Prompting the user to restart triggers the malware to run from the registry key with the command --DATA, and if the user doesn't, a forced restart is triggered. Once the system is reset, the malware begins periodic TLS connections to the command-and-control (C2) server 172.81.60[.]97 on port 443. While the encrypted traffic prevents direct inspection of commands or data, the regular beaconing and response traffic strongly imply that the malware has the ability to poll a remote server for instructions, configuration, or tasking.
Conclusion
Threat groups have long used geopolitical issues and other high-profile events to make malicious content appear more credible or urgent. Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, organizations have been repeatedly targeted with spear-phishing emails using subject lines related to the ongoing conflict, including references to prisoners of war [1]. Similarly, the Chinese threat group Mustang Panda frequently uses this tactic to deploy backdoors, using lures related to the Ukrainian war, conventions on Tibet [2], the South China Sea [3], and Taiwan [4].
The activity described in this blog shares similarities with previous Mustang Panda campaigns, including the use of a current-events archive, a directory created in ProgramData with a legitimate executable used to load a malicious DLL and run registry keys used for persistence. While there is an overlap of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), there is insufficient information available to confidently attribute this activity to a specific threat group. Users should remain vigilant, especially when opening email attachments.
Credit to Tara Gould (Malware Research Lead) Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)
Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
172.81.60[.]97 8f81ce8ca6cdbc7d7eb10f4da5f470c6 - US now deciding what's next for Venezuela.zip 722bcd4b14aac3395f8a073050b9a578 - Maduro to be taken to New York.exe aea6f6edbbbb0ab0f22568dcb503d731 - kugou.dll
Under Medusa’s Gaze: How Darktrace Uncovers RMM Abuse in Ransomware Campaigns
What is Medusa Ransomware in 2025?
In 2025, the Medusa Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) emerged as one of the top 10 most active ransomware threat actors [1]. Its growing impact prompted a joint advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [3]. As of January 2026, more than 500 organizations have fallen victim to Medusa ransomware [2].
Darktrace previously investigated Medusa in a 2024 blog, but the group’s rapid expansion and new intelligence released in late 2025 has lead Darktrace’s Threat Research team to investigate further. Recent findings include Microsoft’s research on Medusa actors exploiting a vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT License Servlet (CVE-2025-10035)[4] and Zencec’s report on Medusa’s abuse of flaws in SimpleHelp’s remote support software (CVE-2024-57726, CVE-2024-57727, CVE-2024-57728) [5].
Reports vary on when Medusa first appeared in the wild. Some sources mention June 2021 as the earliest sightings, while others point to late 2022, when its developers transitioned to the RaaS model, as the true beginning of its operation [3][11].
Madusa Ransomware history and background
The group behind Medusa is known by several aliases, including Storm-1175 and Spearwing [4] [7]. Like its mythological namesake, Medusa has many “heads,” collaborating with initial access brokers (IABs) and, according to some evidence, affiliating with Big Game Hunting (BGH) groups such as Frozen Spider, as well as the cybercriminal group UNC7885 [3][6][13].
Use of Cyrillic in its scripts, activity on Russian-language cybercrime forums, slang unique to Russian criminal subcultures, and avoidance of targets in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries suggest that Medusa operates from Russia or an allied state [11][12].
Medusa ransomware should not be confused with other similarly named malware, such as the Medusa Android Banking Trojan, the Medusa Botnet/Medusa Stealer, or MedusaLocker ransomware. It is easily distinguishable from these variants because it appends the extension .MEDUSA to encrypted files and drops the ransom note !!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt on compromised systems [8].
Who does Madusa Ransomware target?
The group appears to show little restraint, indiscriminately attacking organizations across all sectors, including healthcare, and is known to employ triple extortion tactics whereby sensitive data is encrypted, victims are threatened with data leaks, and additional pressure is applied through DDoS attacks or contacting the victim’s customers, rather than the more common double extortion model [13].
Madusa Ransomware TTPs
To attain initial access, Medusa actors typically purchase access to already compromised devices or accounts via IABs that employ phishing, credential stuffing, or brute-force attacks, and also target vulnerable or misconfigured Internet-facing systems.
Between December 2023 and November 2025, Darktrace observed multiple cases of file encryption related to Medusa ransomware across its customer base. When enabled, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability intervened early in the attack chain, blocking malicious activity before file encryption could begin.
Some of the affected were based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), others in the Americas (AMS), and the remainder in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region. The most impacted sectors were financial services and the automotive industry, followed by healthcare, and finally organizations in arts, entertainment and recreation, ICT, and manufacturing.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool abuse
In most customer environments where Medusa file encryption attempts were observed, and in one case where the compromise was contained before encryption, unusual external HTTP connections associated with JWrapper were also detected. JWrapper is a legitimate tool designed to simplify the packaging, distribution, and management of Java applications, enabling the creation of executables that run across different operating systems. Many of the destination IP addresses involved in this activity were linked to SimpleHelp servers or associated with Atera.
Medusa actors appear to favor RMM tools such as SimpleHelp. Unpatched or misconfigured SimpleHelp RMM servers can serve as an initial access vector to the victims’ infrastructure. After gaining access to SimpleHelp management servers, the threat actors edit server configuration files to redirect existing SimpleHelp RMM agents to communicate with unauthorized servers under their control.
The SimpleHelp tool is not only used for command-and-control (C2) and enabling persistence but is also observed during lateral movement within the network, downloading additional attack tools, data exfiltration, and even ransomware binary execution. Other legitimate remote access tools abused by Medusa in a similar manner to evade detection include Atera, AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, eHorus, N-able, PDQ Deploy/Inventory, Splashtop, TeamViewer, NinjaOne, Navicat, and MeshAgent [4][5][15][16][17].
Data exfiltration
Another correlation among Darktrace customers affected by Medusa was observed during the data exfiltration phase. In several environments, data was exfiltrated to the endpoints erp.ranasons[.]com or pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx (143.110.243[.]154, 144.217.181[.]205) over ports 443, 445, and 80. erp.ranasons[.]com was seemingly active between November 2024 and September 2025, while pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx was seen from November 2024 to March 2025. Evidence suggests that pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx previously hosted a SimpleHelp server [22][23].
Apart from RMM tools, Medusa is also known to use Rclone and Robocopy for data exfiltration [3][19]. During one Medusa compromise detected in mid-2024, the customer’s data was exfiltrated to external destinations associated with the Ngrok proxy service using an SSH-2.0-rclone client.
Medusa Compromise Leveraging SimpleHelp
In Q4 2025, Darktrace assisted a European company impacted by Medusa ransomware. The organization had partial Darktrace / NETWORK coverage and had configured Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability to require manual confirmation for all actions. Despite these constraints, data received through the customer’s security integration with CrowdStrike Falcon enabled Darktrace analysts to reconstruct the attack chain, although the initial access vector remains unclear due to limited visibility.
In late September 2025, a device out of the scope of Darktrace's visibility began scanning the network and using RDP, NTLM/SMB, DCE_RPC, and PowerShell for lateral movement.
CrowdStrike “Defense Evasion: Disable or Modify Tools” alerts related to a suspicious driver (c:\windows\[0-9a-b]{4}.exe) and a PDQ Deploy executable (share=\\<device_hostname>\ADMIN$ file=AdminArsenal\PDQDeployRunner\service-1\exec\[0-9a-b]{4}.exe) suggest that the attackers used the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) technique to terminate antivirus processes on network devices, leveraging tools such as KillAV or AbyssWorker along with the PDQ Software Deployment solution [19][26].
A few hours later, Darktrace observed the same device that had scanned the network writing Temp\[a-z]{2}.exe over SMB to another device on the same subnet. According to data from the CrowdStrike alert, this executable was linked to an RMM application located at C:\Users\<compromised_user>\Documents\[a-z]{2}.exe. The same compromised user account later triggered a CrowdStrike “Command and Control: Remote Access Tools” alert when accessing C:\ProgramData\JWrapper-Remote Access\JWrapper-Remote Access Bundle-[0-9]{11}\JWrapperTemp-[0-9]{10}-[0-9]{1}-app\bin\windowslauncher.exe [27].
Figure 1: An executable file associated with the SimpleHelp RMM tool being written to other devices using the SMB protocol, as detected by Darktrace.
Soon after, the destination device and multiple other network devices began establishing connections to 31.220.45[.]120 and 213.183.63[.]41, both of which hosted malicious SimpleHelp RMM servers. These C2 connections continued for more than 20 days after the initial compromise.
CrowdStrike integration alerts for the execution of robocopy . "c:\windows\\" /COPY:DT /E /XX /R:0 /W:0 /NP /XF RunFileCopy.cmd /IS /IT commands on several Windows servers, suggested that this utility was likely used to stage files in preparation for data exfiltration [19].
Around two hours later, Darktrace detected another device connecting to the attacker’s SimpleHelp RMM servers. This internal server had ‘doc’ in its hostname, indicating it was likely a file server. It was observed downloading documents from another internal server over SMB and uploading approximately 70 GiB of data to erp.ranasons[.]com (143.110.243[.]154:443).
Figure 2: Data uploaded to erp.ranasons[.]com and the number of model alerts from the exfiltrating device, represented by yellow and orange dots.
Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst autonomously investigated the unusual connectivity, correlating the separate C2 and data exfiltration events into a single incident, providing greater visibility into the ongoing attack.
Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst identified a file server making C2 connections to an attacker-controlled SimpleHelp server (213.183.63[.]41) and exfiltrating data to erp.ranasons[.]com.
Figure 4: The same file server that connected to 213.183.63[.]41 and exfiltrated data to erp.ranasons[.]com was also observed attempting to connect to an IP address associated with Moscow, Russia (193.37.69[.]154:7070).
One of the devices connecting to the attacker's SimpleHelp RMM servers was also observed downloading 35 MiB from [0-9]{4}.filemail[.]com. Filemail, a legitimate file-sharing service, has reportedly been abused by Medusa actors to deliver additional malicious payloads [11].
Figure 5: A device controlled remotely via SimpleHelp downloading additional tooling from the Filemail file-sharing service.
Finally, integration alerts related to the ransomware binary, such as c:\windows\system32\gaze.exe and <device_hostname>\ADMIN$ file=AdminArsenal\PDQDeployRunner\service-1\exec\gaze.exe, along with “!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt” ransom notes were observed on network devices. This indicates that file encryption in this case was most likely carried out directly on the victim hosts rather than via the SMB protocol [3].
Conclusion
Threat actors, including nation-state actors and ransomware groups like Medusa, have long abused legitimate commercial RMM tools, typically used by system administrators for remote monitoring, software deployment, and device configuration, instead of relying on remote access trojans (RATs).
Attackers employ existing authorized RMM tools or install new remote administration software to enable persistence, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and ingress tool transfer. By mimicking legitimate administrative behavior, RMM abuse enables attackers to evade detection, as security software often implicitly trusts these tools, allowing attackers to bypass traditional security controls [28][29][30].
To mitigate such risks, organizations should promptly patch publicly exposed RMM servers and adopt anomaly-based detection solutions, like Darktrace / NETWORK, which can distinguish legitimate administrative activity from malicious behavior, applying rapid response measures through its Autonomous Response capability to stop attacks in their tracks.
Darktrace delivers comprehensive network visibility and Autonomous Response capabilities, enabling real-time detection of anomalous activity and rapid mitigation, even if an organization fall under Medusa’s gaze.
Credit to Signe Zaharka (Principal Cyber Analyst) and Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead
Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)
Appendices
List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
IoC - Type - Description + Confidence + Time Observed
185.108.129[.]62 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - March 7, 2023
185.126.238[.]119 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - November 26-27, 2024
213.183.63[.]41 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - November 28, 2024 - Sep 30, 2025
213.183.63[.]42 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - July 4 -9 , 2024
31.220.45[.]120 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - September 12 - Oct 20 , 2025
91.92.246[.]110 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - May 24, 2024
45.9.149[.]112:15330 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - June 21, 2024
89.36.161[.]12 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - June 26-28, 2024
193.37.69[.]154:7070 IP address Suspicious RU IP seen on a device being controlled via SimpleHelp and exfiltrating data to a Medusa related endpoint - September 30 - October 20, 2025
erp.ranasons[.]com·143.110.243[.]154 Hostname Data exfiltration destination - November 27, 2024 - September 30, 2025
pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx·144.217.181[.]205 - Hostname Data exfiltration destination - November 27, 2024 - March 26, 2025
lirdel[.]com · 44.235.83[.]125/a.msi (1b9869a2e862f1e6a59f5d88398463d3962abe51e19a59) File & hash Atera related file downloaded with PowerShell - June 20, 2024
wizarr.manate[.]ch/108.215.180[.]161:8585/$/1dIL5 File Suspicious file observed on one of the devices exhibiting unusual activity during a Medusa compromise - February 28, 2024
!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt" File - Ransom note
*.MEDUSA - File extension File extension added to encrypted files
gaze.exe – File - Ransomware binary
Darktrace Model Coverage
Darktrace / NETWORK model detections triggered during connections to attacker controlled SimpleHelp servers:
Anomalous Connection/Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External
Anomalous Connection/Multiple Connections to New External UDP Port
Anomalous Connection/New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
.jpeg)
![Data uploaded to erp.ranasons[.]com and the number of model alerts from the exfiltrating device, represented by yellow and orange dots.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/69601f43842f8016c3898afd_Screenshot%202026-01-08%20at%201.18.52%E2%80%AFPM.png)
![Cyber AI Analyst identified a file server making C2 connections to an attacker-controlled SimpleHelp server (213.183.63[.]41) and exfiltrating data to erp.ranasons[.]com.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/69601f524d01b4d269313c38_Screenshot%202026-01-08%20at%201.19.06%E2%80%AFPM.png)
![The same file server that connected to 213.183.63[.]41 and exfiltrated data to erp.ranasons[.]com was also observed attempting to connect to an IP address associated with Moscow, Russia (193.37.69[.]154:7070).](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/69601f6a598a3380572e284e_Screenshot%202026-01-08%20at%201.19.32%E2%80%AFPM.png)
