The Black Basta Ransomware Gang's Attack on All States Ag Parts

The Black Basta ransomware gang has attacked All States Ag Parts. All States Ag Parts is an American company specializing in manufacturing and distributing agricultural parts. The company serves the farming and agricultural community by providing a wide range of replacement parts and components for various types of agricultural equipment, including tractors, combines, planters, and more. Black Basta posted All States Ag Parts to its data leak site on July 29th, claiming to have stolen drivers' licenses and power of attorney documents.

Introduction to Black Basta

Black Basta is a RaaS that emerged in early 2022 and is assessed by some researchers as a revival of the Conti and REvil attack groups. The group routinely exfiltrates sensitive data from victims for double extortion. Black Basta engages in highly targeted attacks and likely only works with a limited group of approved affiliates. Considering they had just emerged in the spring of 2022, Black Basta quickly became one of the most prolific attack groups moving into 2023.

Techniques and Tactics

Black Basta was observed leveraging unique TTPs for ingress, lateral movement, data exfiltration data, and deploying ransomware payloads. Ransom demands vary depending on the targeted organization, with reports that they can be as high as 2 million dollars. The Black Basta RaaS continues to evolve its platform, with ransomware payloads that can infect systems running both Windows and Linux systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in VMware ESXi running on enterprise servers.

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 including PrintNightmare, during the infection process. Black Basta also favors the abuse of insecure Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) deployments.

Targeted Sectors

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 that posts exfiltrated data if an organization declines to pay the ransom demand.