BianLian attacks Central Carolina Insurance Agency Inc.

Incident Date:

April 9, 2024

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Overview

Title

BianLian attacks Central Carolina Insurance Agency Inc.

Victim

Central Carolina Insurance Agency

Attacker

Bianlian

Location

Burlington, USA

North Carolina, USA

First Reported

April 9, 2024

BianLian Ransomware Gang's Attack on Central Carolina Insurance Agency

The BianLian ransomware gang attacked Central Carolina Insurance Agency, but no other details were disclosed. Central Carolina Insurance Agency is an independent insurance firm that began operations in Rowan County in 1931, and the organization grew in the 1980s with an expansion into Mooresville. In 2017, it added R3, Risk, Reduction Resources, to its firm to diversify its tenure and clout in the insurance industry and promote a more holistic approach to risk management.

The Emergence of BianLian

The BianLian data extortion group first emerged in June 2022 as a typical RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) provider with Golang-based ransomware until a decrypter was released. In early 2023, they appeared to have abandoned the ransomware payload portion of attacks in favor of less complicated data exfiltration and extortion attacks. This shows how successful the double extortion strategy is for ransomware groups, and we will likely see more groups join the likes of BianLian (and Karakurt before them).

Techniques and Targets

BianLian leverages open-source tooling and command-line scripts to engage in credential harvesting and data exfiltration. BianLian increased attack volumes as they moved away from deploying ransomware payloads in favor of pure data extortion attacks, making them one of the more prominent groups in Q1-2023, although they still lagging far behind leaders.

It is unclear how much BianLian typically requests for a ransom amount or if they are keen to negotiate the demand down. BianLian successfully attacked several high-profile organizations before a free decryption tool was released to help victims recover files encrypted by ransomware. The group abandoned the RaaS model in favor of pure data extortion attacks where data is exfiltrated and ransom demand issued, but no ransomware is deployed.

BianLian has been observed deploying a custom Go-based backdoor for remote access. BianLian uses PowerShell and Windows Command Shell to bypass and evade security solutions. BianLian primarily targets financial institutions, healthcare, manufacturing, education, entertainment, and energy sectors by leveraging compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials. Almost exclusively a data extortion attack group now, it is rarely observed deploying ransomware payloads.

Recent Ransomware Attacks

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