The Medusa Ransomware Attack on Ace Micromatic Group

The Medusa ransomware gang has attacked Ace Micromatic Group. The Ace Micromatic Group is a prominent Indian conglomerate specializing in manufacturing machine tools and automation equipment. Founded in 2004, the group has established itself as a leading player in the machine tool industry, offering a wide range of products and solutions for various manufacturing sectors. The group primarily produces precision machine tools, including CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, turning centers, machining centers, and grinding machines. These machines cater to automotive, aerospace, medical devices, electronics, and general manufacturing industries.

Medusa posted Ace Micromatic Group to its data leak site on July 29th, threatening to leak all stolen data by August 8th if the organization fails to pay a $100,000 ransom. Medusa is a RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) that debuted in the summer of 2021 and has evolved into one of the more active RaaS platforms in late 2022. The attackers restart infected machines in safe mode to avoid detection by security software and prevent recovery by deleting local backups, disabling startup recovery options, and deleting shadow copies.

Rise in Medusa Ransomware Attacks

Medusa ramped up attacks in the latter part of 2022 and became one of the more active groups in the first quarter of 2023. Medusa typically demands ransoms in the millions of dollars, which can vary depending on the target organization’s ability to pay. The Medusa RaaS platform (not to be confused with the operators of the earlier MedusaLocker ransomware) ransomware typically compromises victim networks through malicious email attachments (macros), torrent websites, or malicious ad libraries. Medusa can terminate over 280 Windows services and processes without command line arguments, and there may be a Linux version as well, but it is unclear at this time.

Target Industries and Extortion Tactics

Medusa targets multiple industry verticals, especially healthcare and pharmaceutical companies and organizations in the public sector. Medusa also employs a double extortion scheme where some data is exfiltrated prior to encryption, and they are not as generous with their affiliate attackers, only offering as much as 60% of the ransom if paid.