The LockBit Ransomware Gang's Attack on Yateem Group

The LockBit ransomware gang has attacked Yateem Group. The Yateem Group is a well-established conglomerate based in Bahrain. It was founded in 1911 and has since grown into a diverse business entity with interests in various industries. The group operates across retail, luxury goods, hospitality, real estate, and investment sectors. LockBit posted Yateem Group to its data leak site on April 24th, threatening to publish all stolen data by April 27th if the organization did not cooperate. The ransomware gang has since published all data stolen from Yateem Group.

LockBit's Operations and Tactics

LockBit has been active since 2019 and is enabled with security tool evasion capabilities and an extremely fast encryption speed. LockBit is noted for using a triple extortion model where the victim may also be asked to purchase their sensitive information in addition to paying the ransom demand for decrypting systems. The group continues to improve its attack platform and introduced LockBit in June of 2022, which bore some similarities to the BlackMatter ransomware. The latest version incorporates advanced anti-analysis features and is a threat to both Windows and Linux systems. LockBit employs a Base64-encoded hash and an RSA public key in its configuration and hashes it with MD5. LockBit also created its own bug bounty program.

LockBit's Affiliate Program and Extortion Techniques

LockBit is a well-run affiliate program and has an excellent reputation amongst the affiliate (attacker) community for the platform's maturity and for offering high payouts of as much as 75% of the attack proceeds. LockBit is known to employ multiple extortion techniques, including data exfiltration, to compel payment.