In the digital age, where connectivity and data are paramount, cybersecurity threats such as ransomware loom large, posing significant risks to organizations worldwide. Ransomware attacks have evolved into sophisticated campaigns that can cripple businesses, demanding ransom payments in exchange for decrypting or not sharing/selling valuable data. To combat this pervasive threat, organizations must adopt a robust security strategy that includes advanced, packet-based, comprehensive network visibility; real-time and historical threat detection; and rapid response capabilities in a powerful cybersecurity platform.
Understanding Ransomware
Ransomware operates through a series of meticulously planned stages, each aimed at infiltrating and compromising organizational defenses. These stages typically involve initial infection, establishing persistence within the network, command, and control communication with external servers, data exfiltration, file encryption, and the delivery of ransom demands. Each stage requires targeted detection and proactive response mechanisms to mitigate the impact effectively.
How Omnis Cyber Intelligence Can Help
NETSCOUT’s Omnis Cyber Intelligence (OCI) offers a powerful platform designed to address multiple facets of a ransomware attack, leveraging cutting-edge technology to keep networks secure from initial infection to post-attack recovery.
Stages of Ransomware Attacks and OCI’s Response
- Initial infection
- Entry points: Ransomware typically enters via phishing emails or exploiting vulnerabilities
- OCI’s role: Provides packet-level visibility, real-time packet capture, and analysis to detect suspicious activities early on
- Establishing persistence
- Goal: Ransomware aims to maintain a presence and escalate privileges
- OCI’s role: Uses MITRE ATT&CK mapping and behavior analytics to detect and disrupt these attempts
- Command and control (C2) communication
- Function: Ransomware communicates with external servers for instructions
- OCI’s role: Monitors network traffic for connections to known C2 servers, utilizing threat intelligence feeds to block suspicious C2 traffic
- Data exfiltration
- Tactic: Exfiltrates data before encryption to use as leverage
- OCI’s role: Employs anomaly detection and historical metadata analysis to detect and help halt data exfiltration attempts
- Encryption
- Critical phase: Ransomware encrypts files, demanding ransom for decryption keys
- OCI’s role: Uses decryption appliances and intrusion detection systems to identify and halt encryption attempts
- Ransom note delivery and payment demands
- Action: Attackers deliver a ransom note demanding payment
- OCI’s role: Provides a unified security event display for swift action to investigate and mitigate the impact
- Post-attack cleanup and analysis
- Objective: Removing ransomware and restoring systems
- OCI’s role: Conducts thorough host investigations and compliance reporting and performs historical investigations to determine cause and prevent future attacks
How It Works: A Real-World Example
To illustrate the effectiveness of OCI in combating ransomware, here’s a real-world example. The BlackCat/ALPHV attack targeting Change Healthcare in February 2024 highlights how a properly deployed OCI system could have mitigated the damage at various stages of the attack. The attack consisted of many different phases: a connection over Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to a server from a partner system, a brute force attack against sensitive servers, and lateral movement once a foothold had been established.
For the RDP connection, this could easily be detected with OCI. Sensitive servers should limit the clients that can connect to them over RDP. It’s very easy to do this with OCI’s Policy Violation feature, which would have generated an alert ahead of time to show that a server was being accessed improperly from a partner system.
The brute force attack could have been detected with volumetric comparisons and machine learning via OCI’s Behavioral Analytics feature. Brute force attacks increase the total volume of traffic to a server, and if a baseline has been established for these systems, an increase in the amount of traffic to these servers would generate an alert.
Lateral movement detection is one of the areas in which OCI excels. Because of OCI’s unmatched visibility within corporate networks, detecting lateral movement via the MITRE ATT&CK mapping option once an attacker has gained a foothold into the network is much easier to do.
Early Detection and Mitigation Is Key
Combating ransomware is very difficult. Once a system has had its files encrypted, it can be hard if not impossible to recover those files if they are not backed up to a separate location. Detecting the attack and mitigating the threat before a system is encrypted is key to defending against ransomware attacks.
NETCOUT’s Omnis Cyber Intelligence and Omnis CyberStream form a formidable defensive platform against ransomware, utilizing deep packet inspection, machine learning, and behavior analytics. By integrating seamlessly with existing cybersecurity tools, OCI ensures comprehensive visibility, rapid threat detection, and efficient incident response, safeguarding organizations against current and future ransomware attacks.
Learn more about how OCI helps with ransomware.
Learn more about NETSCOUT’s Omnis CyberStream and Omnis Cyber Intelligence.