The BlackBasta Ransomware Gang's Recent Attack

The BlackBasta ransomware gang has attacked M&M Industries. M&M Industries is a plastic packaging manufacturer founded in 1986 and headquartered in Tennessee, USA. BlackBasta posted M&M Industries to its data leak site on June 23rd, claiming to have stolen financial documents and publishing a 9% sample of exfiltrated data.

Background on 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. Considering they had just emerged in the spring of 2022, BlackBasta quickly became one of the most prolific attack groups, with more than 100 known victims.

Ransom Demands and Tactics

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 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.

Targeted Sectors

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