Ransomware has burst onto the scene with high profile
attacks against hospitals and other organizations. How do you detect ransomware? Ransomware is just another kind of malware
and there’s nothing particularly advanced about ransomware compared to other
malware.
Ransomware uses the same methods to initially infect an
endpoint such as drive-by-downloads, phishing emails, etc. Then it generates necessary encryption keys,
communicates with command and control servers and gets down to business
encrypting every file on the compromised endpoint. Once that’s done it displays
the ransom message and waits for the user to enter an unlock code purchased
from the criminals. So at the initial stages
of attack, trying to detect ransomware is like any other end-point based
malware. You look for new EXEs and DLLs
and other executable content like scripts. For this level of detection check out my earlier webinars with
EventTracker
As criminals begin to move from consumer attacks to
targeting the enterprise, we are going to see more lateral movement between
systems as the attackers try to either encrypt enough endpoints or work their way
across the network to one or more critical servers. In either case their attacks will take a
little longer before they pull the trigger and display the ransom message
because they need to encrypt enough end-user endpoints or at least one critical
server to bring the organization to its knees. These attacks begin to look similar to a persistent data theft (aka APT)
attack.
Detecting lateral movement requires watching for unusual
connections between systems that typically don’t communicate with each other. You also want to watch for user accounts
attempting to logon to systems they normally never access. Pass-the-Hash indicators tie in closely with
later movement and that one of the things discussed in “Spotting
the Adversary with Windows Event Log Monitoring: An Analysis of NSA Guidance”.
So much of monitoring for Ransomware is covered by the
monitoring you do for any kind of malware as well as persistent data theft attacks. But what is different about Ransomware? Basically 2 things
- Detonation: The actually detonation of
ransomware (file encryption) is a very loud and bright signal. There’s no way to miss it if you are watching.
- Speed: Enterprise ransomware attacks can potentially
proceed much faster than data theft attacks.
Detonation
When ransomware begins encrypting files it’s going to
generate a massive amount of file i/o – both read and write. It has to read every file and write every
file back out in encrypted format. The
write activity may occur on the same file if directly being re-written, the
ransomware can delete the original file after writing out an encrypted
copy. In addition, if you watch which
files ransomware is opening you’ll see every file in each folder being opened one
file after another for at least read access. You will also see that read activity in bytes should be matched by write
activity.
Of course there are potential ways ransomware could cloak
this activity by either going low and slow, encrypting files over many days or
by scattering its file access between many different folders instead of
following an orderly process of all files in one folder after another. But I think it will a long time before enough
attacks are getting foiled by such detection techniques that the attackers go
to this extra effort.
How prone to false positives is this tactic? Well, what other legitimate applications have
a similar file i/o signature? I can't think of any. Backup and indexing
programs would have a nearly identical file read
signature but would lack the equal amount of write activity.
The downside to ransomware detonation monitoring is that
detection means a ransomware attack is well underway. This is late stage notification.
Speed
Ransomware attacks against an enterprise may proceed much
faster than persistent data theft attacks because data thieves have to find and
gain access to the data that is not just confidential but also re-saleable or
otherwise valuable to the attacker. That
may take months. On the other hand,
ransomware criminals just need to either:
- Lockdown at least one critical server – without
which the organization can’t function. The
server doesn’t necessarily need any confidential data nor need it be
re-saleable. On a typical network
there’s many more such critical servers than there are servers with data that’s
valuable to the bad guy for re-sale or other exploitation.
- Forget servers and just spread to as many
end-user endpoints as possible. If you
encrypt enough endpoints and render them useless you can ransom the
organization without compromising and servers at all. Endpoints are typically much easier to
compromise because of their intimate exposure and processing of untrusted
content and usage by less security savvy end-users among other reasons.
So beefing up your ransomware monitoring means doing what
you hopefully are already doing: monitoring for indicators of any type of
malware on your network and watching for signs of lateral movement between
systems. But for ransomware you can also
possibly detect late stage ransomware attacks by watching for signature file
i/o by unusual processes. So you need to
be fast in responding.
And that’s the other way that ransomware differentiates
itself from data theft attacks: the need for speed. Ransomware attacks can potentially reach
detonation much faster than data thieves can find, gain access and exfiltrate
data worth stealing. So, while the
indicators of compromise might be the same for most of all ransomware or
persistent data theft attack, reducing your time-to-response is even more
important with ransomware.
“This article by Randy Smith was originally published by EventTracker”
http://www.eventtracker.com/newsletters/detecting-ransomware/