LockBit Ransomware Gang Targets South Africa’s Government Pension Fund

The LockBit ransomware gang claimed responsibility for an attack on South Africa’s government workers' pension fund last month, which hampered the organization’s operations and disrupted pension payments. The South African Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) manages the money within the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), the largest pension fund in Africa, administering the pensions of about 1.7 million government employees and pensioners, as well as their spouses and dependents.

LockBit: A Notorious RaaS Since 2019

LockBit is a RaaS that has been active since 2019. It is highly adept at security tool evasion and boasts an extremely fast encryption speed. LockBit is noted for multiple means of extortion where the victim may also be asked to pay a ransom for any sensitive information exfiltrated in the attack in addition to paying a ransom for the encryption key. LockBit employs publicly available file-sharing services and a custom tool dubbed Stealbit for data exfiltration.

LockBit is by far the most prolific ransomware operation to date and has proven that it follows through on threats, having exposed a large amount of exfiltrated Boeing data in Q4-2023.‍ LockBit has demanded ransoms in excess of $50 million and hit the world’s biggest computer chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), with a $70 million ransom demand in July.

Innovation and Evolution of LockBit

LockBit continues to innovate its RaaS platform following the release of LockBit 3.0 in June of 2022 and introduced what is considered to be the first iteration of a macOS ransomware variant in April of 2023. The latest versions incorporate advanced anti-analysis features and are a threat to both Windows and Linux systems. LockBit 3.0 is modular and configured with multiple execution options that direct the behavior of the ransomware on the affected systems.

LockBit employs a custom Salsa20 algorithm to encrypt files. LockBit takes advantage of remote desktop protocol (RDP) exploitation for most infections and spreads on the network by way of Group Policy Objects and PsExec using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. LockBit also appears still to be supporting the older LockBit 2.0 variant from 2021. LockBit operators were observed frequently exploiting the Citrix Bleed vulnerability (CVE 2023-4966).

Targeting and Affiliate Program

LockBit tends to target larger enterprises across any industry vertical with the ability to pay high ransom demands, but it has also tended to favor healthcare organizations. LockBit is a very well-run affiliate program and has a great reputation amongst the affiliate (attacker) community for the maturity of the platform as well as for offering high payouts of as much as 75% of the ransom proceeds.