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Black Basta was one of the fastest-growing ransomware threats in the last couple of years. Now it's gone silent. What happened?Christine Barry, Mar. 7, 2025When we profiled Black Basta last May, the group had already extorted over $107 million from 329+ victims. It had just pulled off the big attack on Ascension Health, disrupting 142 hospitals across 19 states and Washington DC. The group seemed to keep going strong through the end of 2024, but internal divisions were chipping away at the operations. Divided loyalties resulted in some members attacking Russian targets, which is always prohibited by Russian-based groups. Others were scamming victims by collecting ransom payments without providing working decryption keys, which is considered damaging to the group’s reputation. High-profile attacks and target selection further contributed to the rift. The group appears to have ended operations as of January 11, 2025. There have been no known victims since that date, and all three of the group’s websites are unavailable.That’s quite a meltdown for one of the most active and sophisticated ransomware groups to emerge in the last couple of years. What happened?The big leakWe can thank an individual calling herself ‘ExploitWhispers’ for most of this information. On February 11, 2025, ExploitWhispers leaked about 200,000 Black Basta internal chat messages to the public. The real identity of ExploitWhispers is unknown, but analysts who studied her messages say she predominantly referred to herself as female, and her writing style and use of language indicated she is not a native Russian speaker. ExploitWhispers claims she leaked the chat messages because Black Basta had “brutally” attacked Russian banking infrastructure. The leaked data covered communications spanning from September 18, 2023, to September 28, 2024. While the leak occurred on February 11, it didn't gain widespread attention until February 20, 2025, when threat intelligence firm PRODAFT posted brief details about it.The messages revealed many details about the group structure and key members. Oleg Nefedov is believed to have been the main leader, and was linked to several aliases including Tramp, Trump, GG, and AA. The messages indicate Nefedov was an active member in Revil and Conti and is protected by high-ranking Russian political figures and the FSB and GRU agencies. Nefedov is considered to be the force behind most of the internal conflicts. It should be noted here that some analysts believe the four pseudonyms mentioned above refer to more than one person. No one seems to dispute Nefedov’s role.The group had several administrators, with "Lapa" and "YY" identified as key figures involved in administrative and support tasks. Lapa was said to be “underpaid and degraded by his boss,” which is assumed to have been Nefedov. One of the affiliates was believed to be 17 years old. This has probably not been confirmed but shouldn’t come as a surprise. Minors have been involved in hacking and cybercrime for decades. One 15-year-old Austrian teen was arrested after hacking his way into almost 260 companies. He said he started doing this because he was bored.Technical details about custom malware loaders, cryptocurrency wallets, and email addresses of affiliates were included.The chat logs mentioned exploiting 62 unique common vulnerability exploits (CVEs), including at least ten older, but not forgotten’ CVEs. Three CVEs were discussed prior to their official publication. Discussions around these vulnerabilities highlight the opportunistic nature of target selection based on exploits initial access.The group mixed offensive and defensive tools to carry out attacks. ZoomInfo, ChatGPT, GitHub, Shodan, Metasploit, and Cobalt Strike, are among the tools and techniques mentioned in the chats. Malware payloads were hosted on file-sharing platforms like transfer.sh and temp.sh.Black Basta relied heavily on relies heavily on compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and VPN credentials for initial access and lateral movement. These credentials were often bought from underground marketplaces or discovered through credential stuffing attacks using previously breached databases.Attack methodologies and initial access tactics were documented in the chats, and there were reports of key members defecting to Cactus and Akira. This information is a gift to law enforcement and security researchers, as you can imagine.The big dramaThe technical leaks are not the most interesting messages in the bunch. The internal tension shot up as Black Basta monitored the disruption caused by the attack on Ascension Health. One member shared this Reddit post by a nurse affected by the attack:I worked yesterday when it all started. It was a nightmare. Only certain computers were working up until 4 when the whole system went down. We frantically converted to paper charting, all documentation is now in patient binders. … Multiple departments are closed due to the outage.…Patients are being diverted to other hospitals because we can’t operate like this (not to mention our hospital just had a basement flood this week)I’m scared for my patients and my license. It took me 6 hours to get my pt transitioned to comfort care and get morphine orders. I can’t follow up with docs now because communication is so clogged up.Black Basta members were concerned about the consequences of the attack. Examples:GG: “100% of the FBI and CISA are obliged to get involved, and all this has led to the fact that they will take tough tackle on Black Basta. … We will not wash off this now and most likely the software will fly to the trash,”Tinker: “If someone, God forbid, dies… we will rake the problems on our heads – this will be classified as a terrorist attack. … I don’t want to go to hell if a child with a heart defect dies.”NN: “Can I give them the decryption immediately upon request?”Threat researcher u/BushidoToken interpreted the full conversation to mean that Black Basta returned Ascension’s data and deleted the stolen copies without collecting a ransom. It appears the key members of the group started planning for a rebrand due to this attack.Haven’t we seen this before?Why yes, yes we have. The Conti ransomware group, now confirmed to have been Black Basta’s daddy, had a similar meltdown shutdown when its internal chats, source code, and other sensitive data were leaked in February 2022. The Conti leaks were orchestrated by a Ukrainian security researcher in response to Conti's public support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Conti disbanded and members moved on to form Black Basta and other threat groups. This pattern of shutdown, rebranding, and reemergence is common in the ransomware ecosystem. Here are some notable examples:REvil appeared in April 2019, about 1-2 months before GandCrab's shutdown in May 2019.BlackMatter emerged in late July 2021, approximately 2.5 months after DarkSide's shutdown in May 2021.Conti appeared in July 2020, overlapping with Ryuk's gradual decline over the next 6-8 months.RansomCartel emerged in December 2021, about 5 months after REvil's initial disappearance in July 2021.These transitions typically occur within 2-6 months of the predecessor group's decline or shutdown, allowing for a smooth transfer of resources and personnel while evading law enforcement attention.Will Black Basta be back and why should you care?It seems unlikely the Black Basta brand will be active again anytime soon, but a rebrand or offshoot may occur. Black Basta's recent inactivity suggests the group is shifting to a new strategy, and the leaked chats revealed discussions around rebranding to avoid increased scrutiny. Affiliates have already been observed transitioning to groups like Cactus and Akira, which is something that often precedes a major threat actor rebrand. And frankly, it’s just a ransomware industry standard to rebrand or merge with other threat actors after one brand has been damaged. Even if there is no rebrand, other groups will pop up to fill the vacuum left by Black Basta’s decline.So why does this matter, since it happens so often anyway? To some companies, it doesn’t matter at all. Their defenses against ransomware won’t change much due to a rebranding, and they don’t keep up with threat actors anyway. But to security providers and IT teams, understanding the lifecycle of these groups with help them become more familiar with attack methods. Rebranded groups often retain the same tactics and capabilities as the prior group, but the members have gained experience from the success and eventual failure of their former group. They use the downtime between brands to refine their operations and recruit affiliates or talent into the new group. Public leaks, law enforcement action, and the research of security experts can help companies remain up to date on potential threats. https://ift.tt/LIqUiVx post was originally published on the Barracuda Blog. Christine BarryChristine Barry Senior Chief Cybersecurity Storyteller and Content Manager at Barracuda. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology and project management credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.Connect with Christine on LinkedIn here.Join our Reddit community!
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