Event ID: 306
Event Time: Oct 02, 2024 05:52 AM
Host: Vergil (172[.]16[.]17[.]130)
Rule Level: Incident Responder
EDR Action: Detected — execution not prevented
Verdict: True Positive — Malicious — Successful Compromise
A user on host Vergil received a phishing email from sale[@]thefasted[.]com containing a ZIP archive disguised as a payment confirmation invoice. The user extracted the archive and manually executed the embedded PE, which deployed Akira ransomware. The malware wrote a ransom note to disk and deleted Volume Shadow Copies via a WMI-backed PowerShell one-liner, eliminating local recovery options. EDR logged the activity in Detect-only mode, so the full impact chain completed. The host was isolated.
| Stage | Evidence | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Sender sale[@]thefasted[.]com, attachment payment-confirmation-invoice-12345[.]zip | |
| Staging | URL | download[.]cyberlearn[.]academy fronting files-ld[.]s3[.]us-east-2[.]amazonaws[.]com |
| Execution | Sysmon EID 1 | Payment Confirmation Invoice #12345[.]exe spawned by explorer[.]exe — manual double-click from Downloads |
| Impact | Sysmon EID 11 | Ransom note file creation by the ransomware process |
| Recovery Inhibition | Process log, 05:52:30 | powershell[.]exe -Command "Get-WmiObject Win32_Shadowcopy | Remove-WmiObject" |
The explorer.exe parent process is the key execution artifact — it confirms user-initiated launch rather than automated or scripted execution, which places this squarely as User Execution following a social engineering lure.
The L1 note flagged that the variant could not be confirmed as Akira. Following the ransomware playbook, the ransom note was submitted to ID Ransomware, which returned an Akira identification. The note directs victims to the Akira leak/negotiation site at akiralkzxzq2dsrzsrvbr2xgbbu2wgsmxryd4csgfameg52n7efvr2id[.]onion, which corroborates the identification independently of the note text itself. Behaviour is consistent with the TTPs documented in CISA advisory AA24-109A.
Hi friends,
Whatever who you are and what your title is if you're reading this it means the internal infrastructure of your company is fully or partially dead, all your backups - virtual, physical - everything that we managed to reach - are completely removed. Moreover, we have taken a great amount of your corporate data prior to encryption.
Well, for now let's keep all the tears and resentment to ourselves and try to build a constructive dialogue. We're fully aware of what damage we caused by locking your internal sources. At the moment, you have to know:
1. Dealing with us you will save A LOT due to we are not interested in ruining your financially. We will study in depth your finance, bank & income statements, your savings, investments etc. and present our reasonable demand to you. If you have an active cyber insurance, let us know and we will guide you how to properly use it. Also, dragging out the negotiation process will lead to failing of a deal.
2. Paying us you save your TIME, MONEY, EFFORTS and be back on track within 24 hours approximately. Our decryptor works properly on any files or systems, so you will be able to check it by requesting a test decryption service from the beginning of our conversation. If you decide to recover on your own, keep in mind that you can permanently lose access to some files or accidently corrupt them - in this case we won't be able to help.
3. The security report or the exclusive first-hand information that you will receive upon reaching an agreement is of a great value, since NO full audit of your network will show you the vulnerabilities that we've managed to detect and used in order to get into, identify backup solutions and upload your data.
4. As for your data, if we fail to agree, we will try to sell personal information/trade secrets/databases/source codes - generally speaking, everything that has a value on the darkmarket - to multiple threat actors at ones. Then all of this will be published in our blog - https://akiral2iz6a7qgd3ayp3l6yub7xx2uep76idk3u2kollpj5z3z636bad.onion.
5. We're more than negotiable and will definitely find the way to settle this quickly and reach an agreement which will satisfy both of us.
If you're indeed interested in our assistance and the services we provide you can reach out to us following simple instructions:
1. Install TOR Browser to get access to our chat room - https://www.torproject.org/download/.
2. Paste this link - https://akiralkzxzq2dsrzsrvbr2xgbbu2wgsmxryd4csgfameg52n7efvr2id.onion.
3. Use this code - 6729-HK-NIZN-WOPQ - to log into our chat.
Keep in mind that the faster you will get in touch, the less damage we cause.ID Ransomware additionally notes that where a clean copy of an encrypted file is retained, the Avast Akira decryptor can be used for key derivation and file recovery. This is the only viable recovery path on this host given shadow copy destruction.
| Technique | Tactic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| T1566.001 | Initial Access | Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment |
| T1204.002 | Execution | User Execution: Malicious File |
| T1059.001 | Execution | Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell |
| T1047 | Execution | Windows Management Instrumentation |
| T1490 | Impact | Inhibit System Recovery |
| T1486 | Impact | Data Encrypted for Impact |
Platform submission used parent techniques T1566, T1204, and T1059 as the LetsDefend dropdown offers no sub-technique granularity. Sub-technique mapping above reflects the confirmed observed behaviour.
| Type | Indicator |
|---|---|
| SHA256 | 2C7AEAC07CE7F03B74952E0E243BD52F2BFA60FADC92DD71A6A1FEE2D14CDD77 |
| Filename | Payment Confirmation Invoice #12345[.]exe |
| Archive | payment-confirmation-invoice-12345[.]zip |
| File Path | C:\Users\LetsDefend\Downloads\payment-confirmation-invoice-12345\ |
| Sender | sale[@]thefasted[.]com |
| Delivery Domain | download[.]cyberlearn[.]academy |
| Staging Bucket | files-ld[.]s3[.]us-east-2[.]amazonaws[.]com |
| Tor Site | akiralkzxzq2dsrzsrvbr2xgbbu2wgsmxryd4csgfameg52n7efvr2id[.]onion |
| Host | 172[.]16[.]17[.]130 |
Detected, not Blocked or Quarantined. Every downstream stage — note write, shadow copy deletion — completed. This is a True Positive with confirmed impact, not a prevented attack.vssadmin.exe or wmic.exe is worth flagging for detection engineering. Rules keyed only on vssadmin delete shadows would miss this. A detection on Get-WmiObject Win32_Shadowcopy piped to Remove-WmiObject, and on the equivalent CIM cmdlets, closes that gap.