Akira Ransomware Group Targets Santa Cruz Seaside Company

The ransomware group known as Akira has attacked Santa Cruz Seaside Company. Files stolen include many financial documents, HR, various reports, and other business data. The Santa Cruz Seaside Company operates numerous hospitality and leisure businesses in California. One is the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park, which has been touted as the "Coney Island of the West” and opened in 1907.

Akira first emerged in March 2023, and the group may have links to the notorious Conti gang, although this is difficult to ascertain given the Conti code was leaked in 2022. Interestingly, Akira’s extortion platform includes a chat feature for victims to negotiate directly with the attackers, and it has been observed that Akira will inform victims who have paid a ransom of the infection vectors they leveraged to carry out the attack. This is not a “standard procedure” for ransomware, as many ransomware operators have engaged in multiple attacks on the same victim.

A decrypter was released that may have worked on earlier variants or obscure samples of Akira, but its utility has proven to be null for recovery.‍ Akira maintains a modest but growing attack volume, putting them in about the middle of the pack when compared to other ransomware operators.‍ Ransom demands appear to range between $200,000 to more than $4 million.

Akira's Technical Capabilities

Akira operates a RaaS written in C++ that is capable of targeting both Windows and Linux systems, typically by exploiting credentials for VPNs. Akira modules will delete Windows Shadow Volume Copies leveraging PowerShell and is designed to encrypt a wide range of file types while avoiding Windows system files with .exe, .lnk, .dll, .msi, and .sys extensions. Akira also abuses legitimate LOLBins/COTS tools like PCHunter64, making detection more difficult.

In July, a Linux variant for Akira was detected in the wild, and the group was also observed remotely exploiting a zero-day in Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software (CVE-2023-20269) in brute-force attacks since at least August. Akira has also been observed exploiting VMware ESXi vulnerabilities for lateral movement.

Impact Across Industries

The group has attacked dozens of organizations across multiple industry verticals, including education, finance, and manufacturing.‍ Akira operations include data exfiltration for double extortion with the threat to expose or sell the data should the victim fail to come to terms with the attackers and are assessed to have leaked gigabytes of stolen data from victims.