Fox-IT has encountered various ways in which ransomware is being spread and activated. Many infections happen by sending spam e-mails and luring the receiver in opening the infected attachment. Another method is impersonating a well-known company in a spam e-mail stating an invoice or track&trace information is ready for download. By following the link provided in the e-mail, the receiver can download the file which contains the malware from a convincing looking website. Distributing ransomware through malvertising, an exploit kit being served on an advertisement network, is also a common way for criminals to infect systems.
In the past few months, Fox-IT’s incident response team, FoxCERT, was involved in several investigations where a different technique surfaced: activating ransomware from a compromised remote desktop server.
Getting access
Before we get to why this might be lucrative for the criminals, how do they get access in the first place? RDP, or Remote Desktop Protocol, is a propriety protocol developed by Microsoft to provide remote access to a system over the network. This can be the local network, but also the Internet. When a user successfully connects to a system running remote desktop services (formerly known as terminal services) over RDP, the user is presented with a graphical interface similar to that when working on the system itself. This is widely used by system administrators for managing various systems in the organization, by users working with thin clients, or for working remotely. Attackers mostly tend to abuse remote desktop services for lateral movement after getting foothold in the network. In this case however, RDP is their point of entry into the network.
Entries in the log files show the attackers got access to the servers by brute forcing usernames and passwords on remote desktop servers that are accessible from the internet. Day in, day out, failed login attempts are recorded coming from hundreds of unique IP-addresses trying hundreds of unique usernames. Connecting remote desktop servers directly to the internet is not recommended and brute forcing remote desktop services is nothing new. But without the proper controls in place to prevent or at least detect and respond to successful compromises, brute force RDP attacks are still relevant. And now with a ransomware twist as well.
Image 1: Example network with compromised RDP server and attacker deploying ransomware.
The impact
After brute forcing credentials to gain access to a remote desktop server, the attackers can do whatever the user account has permissions to on the server and network. So how could an attacker capitalize on this? Underground markets exist where RDP credentials can be sold for an easy cash-out for the attacker. A more creative attacker could attempt all kinds of privileged escalation techniques to ultimately become domain administrator (if not already), but most of the times this is not even necessary as the compromised user account might have access to all kinds of network shares with sensitive data. For example Personally identifiable information (PII) or Intellectual property (IP) which in its turn can be exfiltrated and sold on underground markets. The compromised user account and system could be added to a botnet, used as proxy server, or used for sending out spam e-mail messages. Plenty of possibilities, including taking the company data hostage by executing ransomware.
Depending on the segmentation and segregation of the network, the impact of ransomware being executed from a workstation in a client LAN might be limited to the network segments and file shares the workstation and affected user account can reach. From a server though, an attacker might be able to find and reach other servers and encrypt more critical company data to increase the impact.
The power lies in the amount of time the attackers can spend on reconnaissance if no proper detection controls are in place. For example, the attackers have time to analyze how and when back-ups are created of critical company data before executing the ransomware. This helps to make sure the back-ups are useless in restoring the encrypted data which in its turn increases the chances of a company actually paying the ransom. In the cases Fox-IT was involved in investigating the breaches, the attackers spend weeks actively exploring the network by scanning and lateral movement. As soon as the ransomware was activated, no fixed ransom was demanded but negotiation by e-mail was required. As the attackers have a lot of knowledge of the compromised network and company, their position in the negotiation is stronger than when infection took place through a drive-by download or infected e-mail attachment. The demanded ransom reflects this and could be significantly higher.
Image 2: Example ransomware wallpaper.
Prevention, detection, response
Connecting Remote Desktop Services to the Internet is a risk. Services like that, which are not essential, should be disabled. If remote access is necessary, user accounts with remote access should have hard to guess passwords and preferably a second factor for authentication (2FA) or second step in verification (2SV). To prevent eaves dropping on the remote connection, a strong encryption channel is recommended. Brute force attacks on remote desktop servers and ransomware infections can be prevented. Fox-IT can help to improve your company’s security posture and prevent attacks, for example by an architecture review, security audit or training.
If prevention fails, swift detection will reduce the impact. With verbose logging securely stored and analyzed, accompanied by 24/7 network and end point monitoring an ongoing breach or malware infection will be detected and remediated. The Cyber Threat Management platform can assist in detecting and preventing attacks. And if business continuity and reputation are at stake, our emergency response team is available 24/7.
Wouter Jansen, Senior Forensic IT Expert at Fox-IT