Rewterz Threat Alert – Phobos Ransomware – Active IOCs

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

Phobos ransomware appeared at the beginning of 2019. It has been noted that this new strain of ransomware is strongly based on the previously known family: Dharma (a.k.a. Crysis), and probably distributed by the same group as Dharma. Phobos is one of the ransomware that is distributed via hacked Remote Desktop (RDP) connections. This isn’t surprising, as hacked RDP servers are a cheap commodity on the underground market, and can make for an attractive and cost-efficient dissemination vector for threat groups.

This ransomware does not deploy any techniques of UAC bypass. When we try to run it manually, the UAC confirmation pops up:

Impact

• File encryption

Indicators of Compromise

MD5

• 4f25e57d4f754f0cea4f30d9da4156fd
• 373a7a21c65d50861b0f7fa81d998165
• 90bfa1d3b743c1546a053a206e49cac6
• 4942b6f7a7b009cf5bb1ef7d31270b98

SHA-256

• 054b0098560bb32c3644d3bc428458e6ccf7b2fc5828819ea05443ea5acb68ac
• 4c957fadcdcaa43f3ea17c2f6db5cec7930d79122e05f920792e460b3ae34f52
• a7de37d7af90114db4a84cab953b7d0703cc5c38ba324de82b1e828315fbfa80
• 84ff717613c72d86620c9f2466e8fd8c936a23d89541b53120516e0accc8df75

SHA1

• 97ea39d2125870960995aab761ed5c2bb5911ff7
• 656e8631259637c4381bdfb7ade8a307468f8c68
• a4a7510863306c0c07f0f5a6f5e83a4b5c2b3574
• b51cb8bfb9321b2f2fa0aefe62127fcc47841b08

Remediation

• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Always be suspicious of emails sent by an unknown sender.
• Search for IOCs in your environment.