The Black Basta Ransomware Attack on Blount Fine Foods

The Black Basta ransomware gang has attacked Blount Fine Foods. Blount Fine Foods, previously known as Blount Seafood, is a company that specializes in the production of prepared foods and soups. They manufacture a variety of frozen and fresh soups under their own Blount brand, as well as for well-known brands like Panera Bread and Legal Sea Foods. The company is based in Fall River, Massachusetts, and operates a production facility in Warren, Rhode Island.

Black Basta posted Blount Fine Foods to its data leak site on July 1st, publishing 8% of allegedly stolen data. The ransomware gang has not disclosed any further details.

Who is Black Basta?

Black Basta is a more recent RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) player that first emerged in early 2022 and is assessed by some researchers to be a revival of the Conti and REvil attack groups. Black Basta continues to evolve their RaaS platform, with ransomware payloads that can infect systems running both Windows and Linux systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in VMware ESXi running on enterprise servers and uses both ChaCha20 and RSA-4096 for rapid encryption of the targeted network and, in some cases, leverages malware strains like Qakbot and exploits like PrintNightmare during the infection process.

Black Basta typically targets manufacturing, transportation, construction and related services, telecommunications, the automotive sector, and more.