New Ransomware Gangs — Haron and BlackMatter — Emerge on Cybercrime Forums
July 29, 2021Ravie Lakshmanan
Two new ransomware-as-service (RaaS) programs have appeared on the threat radar this month, with one group professing to be a successor to DarkSide and REvil , the two infamous ransomware syndicates that went off the grid following major attacks on Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya over the past few months. "The project has incorporated in itself the best features of DarkSide, REvil, and LockBit," the operators behind the new BlackMatter group said in their darknet public blog, making promises to not strike organizations in several industries, including healthcare, critical infrastructure, oil and gas, defense, non-profit, and government sectors. According to Flashpoint, the BlackMatter threat actor registered an account on Russian-language forums XSS and Exploit on July 19, quickly following it up with a post stating they are looking to purchase access to infected corporate networks comprising anywhere between 500 and 15,000 hosts in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.
