Media Coverage

According to a recent Trend Micro report, the LockBit group was responsible for at least 25% of all ransomware attacks in 2023 and has hit thousands of victims since 2020.

“It should be harder year over year to exploit whatever software we’re using, whatever devices we’re using,” said Dustin Childs, who is the head of threat awareness at Trend Micro ZDI. Unlike Crowdfense and Zerodium, ZDI pays researchers to acquire zero-days, then reports them to the companies affected with the goal of getting the vulnerabilities fixed.

New research from Trend Micro, which looked at the activities following the LockBit disruption announced over a month ago, found that the law enforcement operation has a “significant impact on the group’s activities.”

Just recently, Trend Micro identified a new Agenda ransomware variant in the wild. This latest Rust-based version comes with a variety of new functionalities and stealth mechanisms, and sets its sights squarely on VMware vCenter and ESXi servers.

The payloads identified by Trend Micro all involve the hijacking of legitimate software tools by cybercriminals, with the likely goal of financial gain. Jasmin, SparkRAT and XMRig are all open-source tools available on GitHub.