August 23, 2021
Inspired by the LockBit Ransomware gang, a Nigerian threat actor tried to recruit an insider with a tempting offer of one million dollars to install a ransomware payload on the servers of the company.
The plan backfired when the fraudster chose the wrong target and revealed his technique, lack of experience and lack of intelligence.
Various messages, which were sent to mailboxes protected by cloud email security platform Abnormal Security, caught the attention of researchers due to the offer of the sender to the recipient: a $1 million payout for the installation of ransomware in the network.
Demonware (also known as Black Kingdom) is an open-source ransomware project that is available on GitHub and is typically deployed by people with inferior technical know-how.
The researchers responded to the threat actor’s invitation to chat by posing as an employee who wanted to make easy money, Crane Hassold, director of threat intelligence at Abnormal Security, wrote in a blog post over the weekend.
During the chat, the threat actor delivered the ransomware payload and the conversation continued via Telegram, which provided information about the scammer’s motivation and technical skills.
As for the threat, an actor trying to make money via ransomware was the desire to finance their business, a social network startup called Sociogram, where he acted as CEO. They revealed further personal details by saying that they owned the startup and that they were based in Nigeria, even sharing their LinkedIn profile.
Nigeria is best known in the infosec industry as a hotbed for business email compromise (BEC) scammers, so social engineering is a common trick among the country’s cybercriminals.
For more information, read the original story in BleepingComputer.
