Black Basta attacks Navitas Petroleum
Incident Date:
December 19, 2023
Overview
Title
Black Basta attacks Navitas Petroleum
Victim
Navitas Petroleum
Attacker
Blackbasta
Location
First Reported
December 19, 2023
Black Basta Ransomware Group's Attack on Navitas Petroleum
The Black Basta ransomware group claimed an attack against Navitas Petroleum. The group obtained 330GB of corporate data, including accounting, HR, and other confidential documents. Navitas Petroleum is a publicly traded, North America-focused oil and natural gas exploration and production company. Black Basta is a RaaS that emerged in early 2022 and is assessed by some researchers to be an offshoot of the disbanded Conti and REvil attack groups. The group routinely exfiltrates sensitive data from victims for additional extortion leverage.
Highly Targeted Attacks
Black Basta engages in highly targeted attacks and is assessed to only work with a limited group of highly vetted affiliate attackers. Black Basta has quickly became one of the most prolific attack groups in 2023 and was observed leveraging unique TTPs for ingress, lateral movement, data exfiltration data, and deployment of ransomware payloads.
Ransom Demands and Evolution
Ransom demands vary depending on the targeted organization with reports that they can be as high as $2 million dollars. Black Basta continues to evolve their RaaS platform, with ransomware payloads that can infect systems running both Windows and Linux systems. Black Basta is particularly adept at exploiting vulnerabilities in VMware ESXi running on enterprise servers.
Technical Details of the Ransomware
Black Basta ransomware is written in C++, can target both Windows and Linux systems, encrypts data with ChaCha20, and then the encryption key is encrypted with RSA-4096 for rapid encryption of the targeted network. In some cases, Black Basta leverages malware strains like Qakbot and exploits such as PrintNightmare during the infection process. Black Basta also favors abuse of insecure Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) deployments, one of the leading infection vectors for ransomware.
Targeted Sectors and Double Extortion
Black Basta typically targets manufacturing, transportation, construction and related services, telecommunications, the automotive sector, and healthcare providers. Black Basta also employs a double extortion scheme and maintains an active leaks website where they post exfiltrated data if an organization declines to pay the ransom demand.
Recent Ransomware Attacks
The Recent Ransomware Attacks (RRA) site acts as a watchtower, providing you with near real-time ransomware tracking of attacks, groups and their victims. Given threat actors’ overarching, lucrative success so far, ransomware attacks have become the most ubiquitous, and financially and informationally impactful cyber threat to businesses and organizations today.
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