A new ransomware family named “Ymir” has been discovered in active use by hackers. The malware uses tactics such as encryption and PowerShell remote-control to achieve its goals.
The attackers gained control via PowerShell remote control commands, and successfully reduced system security before deploying Ymir.
Ymir performs a range of operations in memory using malloc, memmove, and memcmp function calls. It also uses CryptoPP functions to encrypt files.
Static analysis shows the binary has suspicious API calls to functions such as CryptAcquireContextA, CryptReleaseContext, CryptGenRandom, TerminateProcess and WinExec.
The malware also contains a hardcoded list of file name extensions to exclude from encryption.
Dynamic analysis reveals hundreds of calls to the memmove function, which are used to load small pieces of instructions into memory for performing malicious functions.
The artifact uses the stream cipher ChaCha20 algorithm to encrypt files and appends the extension '.6C5oy2dVr6' for each encrypted file.
The article also describes the RustyStealer threat used by the hackers for controlling the affected machines, and their use of PowerShell remote-control capabilities and SystemBC scripts.
Various Ymir TTP techniques have been identified, including Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell and Data Encrypted for Impact.
Kaspersky products detect this new threat as Trojan-Ransom.Win64.Ymir.gen.