Medusa attacks Buenos Aires Club

Incident Date:

November 1, 2023

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Overview

Title

Medusa attacks Buenos Aires Club

Victim

Jockey Club

Attacker

Medusa

Location

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Buenos Aires, Argentina

First Reported

November 1, 2023

Ransomware Attack on Jockey Club by Medusa Gang

The ransomware gang Medusa took control of the Jockey Club data in Argentina. According to BCA, the criminal group is seeking a ransom of $300,000 in exchange for the information. The Jockey Club is a club in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was created by President Carlos Pellegrini on April 15, 1882, to gather Argentina's most important and prominent men.

The Rise of Medusa RaaS

The Medusa is a RaaS that made its debut in the summer of 2021 and has evolved to be one of the more active RaaS platforms in late 2022, but attack volumes have been inconsistent in the first half of 2023. The attackers restart infected machines in safe mode to avoid detection by security software as well preventing recovery by deleting local backups, disabling startup recovery options, and deleting VSS Shadow Copies to thwart encryption rollback.

Medusa ramped up attacks in the latter part of 2022 and have been one of the more active groups in the first quarter of 2023 but appear to have waned somewhat in the second quarter. Medusa typically demands ransoms in the millions of dollars which can vary depending on the target organization’s ability to pay.

Modus Operandi of Medusa

The Medusa RaaS operation (not to be confused with the operators of the earlier MedusaLocker ransomware) typically compromises victim networks through malicious email attachments (macros), torrent websites, or through malicious ad libraries. Medusa can terminate over 280 Windows services and processes without command line arguments (there may be a Linux version as well, but it is unclear at this time.)

Medusa targets multiple industry verticals, especially healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, and public sector organizations too. Medusa also employs a double extortion scheme where some data is exfiltrated prior to encryption, but they are not as generous with their affiliate attackers, only offering as much as 60% of the ransom if paid.

Recent Ransomware Attacks

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The site’s data is generated based on hosting choices of real-world threat actors, and a handful of other trackers. While sanitization efforts have been taken, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy of the data. Attack updates will be made as source data is reported by reputable sources. By viewing, accessing, or using RRA you acknowledge you are doing so at your own risk.