Hive ransomware actors have extorted over $100M from victims, says FBI • TechCrunch

The U.S. authorities has warned of ongoing malicious exercise by the infamous Hive ransomware gang, which has extorted greater than $100 million from its rising checklist of victims.

A joint advisory launched by the FBI, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, and the Division of Well being and Human Providers on Thursday revealed that the Hive ransomware gang has acquired upwards of $100 million in ransom funds from over 1,300 victims because the gang was first noticed in June 2021.

This checklist of victims contains organizations from a variety of industries and significant infrastructure sectors comparable to authorities amenities, communications, and knowledge expertise, with a deal with particularly healthcare and public well being entities.

Hive, which operates a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) mannequin, claimed the Illinois-based Memorial Well being System as its first healthcare sufferer in August 2021. This cyberattack compelled the well being system to divert look after emergency sufferers and cancel pressing care surgical procedures and radiology exams. The ransomware gang additionally launched delicate well being data of about 216,000 sufferers.

Then, in June 2022, the gang compromised Costa Rica’s public well being service earlier than focusing on New York-based emergency response and ambulance service supplier Empress EMS the next month. Over 320,000 people had data stolen, together with names, dates of companies, insurance coverage data, and Social Safety numbers.

Simply final month, Hive additionally added Lake Charles Memorial Well being System, a hospital system in Southwest Louisiana, to its darkish internet leak website, the place it posted a whole lot of gigabytes of information, together with affected person and worker data.

Hive additionally focused Tata Energy, a prime energy era firm in India, in October.

The joint FBI-CISA-HHS advisory warns that Hive sometimes positive aspects entry to sufferer networks by utilizing stolen single-factor credentials to entry group distant desktop programs, digital personal networks, and different internet-facing programs. However CISA additionally warns that the ransomware group additionally skirts some multi-factor authentication programs by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities.

“In some instances, Hive actors have bypassed multi-factor authentication and gained entry to FortiOS servers by exploiting CVE-2020-12812,” the advisory says. “This vulnerability allows a malicious cyber-actor to log in and not using a immediate for the person’s second authentication issue (FortiToken) when the actor modifications the case of the username.”

The advisory additionally warns that Hive actors have been noticed reinfecting victims that restored their environments with out paying a ransom, both with Hive or one other ransomware variant.

Microsoft’s Menace Intelligence Middle (MSTIC) researchers warned earlier this yr that Hive had upgraded its malware by migrating its code from Go to the Rust programming language, enabling it to make use of a extra advanced encryption methodology for its ransomware as a service payload.

The U.S. authorities shared Hive indicators of compromise (IOCs) and techniques, methods, and procedures (TTPs) found by the FBI to assist defenders detect malicious exercise related to Hive associates and cut back or remove the affect of such incidents.