The Cactus Ransomware Gang's Attack on Lagarde Meregnani

The Cactus ransomware gang has attacked Lagarde Meregnani. Lagarde Meregnani is a French renovation and decoration company headquartered in Maxeville, France. Alongside traditional renovations, Lagarde Meregnani specializes in heritage restoration. It operates throughout France and has six agencies in the country. Lagarde Meregnani works on new work or renovation sites in painting and decoration, floor coverings and wall coverings, facade renovation, exterior insulation, tiles and earthenware, and more. Cactus posted Lagarde Meregnani to its data leak site on September 5th but provided no further details.

Cactus Ransomware Gang's Operations

Cactus has been in operation since at least March 2023. Cactus has been observed employing known vulnerabilities within VPN appliances to initiate an initial breach. Once gaining entry to the network, Cactus operators engage in activities such as enumerating local and network user accounts and identifying accessible endpoints. They then proceed to generate new user accounts and utilize custom scripts for the automated rollout and activation of the ransomware encryptor through scheduled tasks.

It is noteworthy that the ransomware encryptor utilized by Cactus exhibits a unique characteristic – it necessitates a decryption key for the execution of the binary, likely implemented to evade detection by anti-virus software. This decryption key is concealed within a file containing random text named ntuser.dat, which is loaded through a scheduled task.