Using the Conti ransomware’s stolen source code, a hacking group produced their own ransomware to be used in cyberattacks against Russian organisations.

We frequently hear about ransomware attacks that target businesses and encrypt data, but we hardly ever hear about assaults on Russian organisations.

This absence of attacks is a result of Russian hackers’ widespread conviction that if they do not target Russian targets, then the nation’s law enforcement will ignore attacks on other nations.

The situation has changed, though, as the hacking gang NB65 is now launching ransomware assaults against Russian firms.

Russian targets for ransomware
An organisation known as NB65 has been hacking Russian organisations for the past month, collecting their data, and exposing it online while claiming responsibility for the attacks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The document management company Tensor, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and the state-owned Russian Television and Radio broadcaster VGTRK are among the Russian organisations that the hacking group claims to have attacked.

The attack on VGTRK was particularly noteworthy because it is claimed that 786.2 GB of data, including 900,000 emails and 4,000 files, were stolen and then released on the DDoS Secrets website.

The NB65 hackers have recently adopted a new strategy and, since the end of March, have been targeting Russian enterprises with ransomware attacks.

This is made even more intriguing by the fact that the hacker organisation used the Conti Ransomware operation’s leaked source code to construct their own ransomware. Conti is a group of Russian threat actors that forbid their members from assaulting targets in Russia.

A security researcher released 170,000 internal chat conversations and the source code for Conti’s operation after they sided with Russia in the war on Ukraine.

Threat researcher Tom Malka originally alerted BleepingComputer to NB65’s activities, but we were unable to locate a ransomware sample, and the hacking collective was unable to offer one either.

But yesterday, a sample of the modified Conti ransomware executable used by the NB65 was released to VirusTotal, giving us a look at how it operates.

This sample is recognised as Conti by almost all antivirus vendors on VirusTotal, and Intezer Analyze found that it shares 66% of the code with other Conti ransomware strains.

The ransomware developed by NB65 would append the when encrypting files, according to a test by BleepingComputer.

The names of the encrypted files have an NB65 extension.

Throughout the encrypted device, the ransomware will also produce ransom notes with the filename R3ADM3.txt. The threat actors will blame President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine for the cyberattack.

“We keep a careful eye on things. War crimes should not have been committed by your president. Look no further than Vladimir Putin for someone to blame for your current condition “reads the NB65 ransomware message displayed below.

In order to prevent existing decryptors from functioning, the NB65 hacker gang adjusted its encryptor for each victim based on the first Conti source code leak, according to a spokesperson who spoke to BleepingComputer.

“It has been changed such that no decryptor created by Conti will function. A random key is generated for each deployment depending on a few variables that we alter for each target, “According to NB65, BleepingComputer.

Without speaking to us, there is truly no way to decode.

NB65 informed us that they did not anticipate hearing from their victims at this time because they have not received any correspondence from them.

We’ll let NB65’s justifications for assaulting Russian groups speak for themselves.