South Staffordshire Water
The CL0P ransomware group claimed responsibility for the attack on UK-based utility provider South Staffordshire Water. However, they have said there is no impact on the water supply or drinking water safety.
On its extortion website, CL0P uploaded a vast collection of stolen papers. These included passport scans, spreadsheets with administrator passwords, drivers’ licences, and, concerningly, screenshots of administration interfaces of wastewater treatment systems.
Possible IOC’s
Whist CL0P use broad malicious email campaigns to identify potential victims; recent evidence suggests that vulnerabilities in public-facing infrastructure are also exploited to gain a foothold within a victim’s network.
Malicious Spam Campaigns
CL0P malicious spam campaigns use information from previous victims, most likely to “cascade” their ransomware threat and attack other organisations and supply chains. Clients, associates, or suppliers of any victim organisation may be the subject of these malicious emails.
Exposing Victims
Thought to be a Russian-language cybercriminal group, CL0P is responsible for several infamous “big game hunter” ransomware attacks. Other cybercriminal groups have reported them as being associated with or adopting their malware.
Utilising common ‘steal, encrypt and leak’ tactics as most well-organised and coordinated ransomware groups employ, victims who fail to meet ransom demands are promptly ‘named and shamed‘ on ‘CL0P^_- LEAKS’, the group’s Tor-hosted leak site. This is problematic as victims are often further targeted by other threat actors over long periods.
Sapphire Security Operations Centre (SOC)
The Sapphire Team will continue to monitor and collect intelligence about this incident and other activities that we believe can improve customer security, using our threat intelligence, threat hunting and investigation capabilities.