The Medusa Ransomware Gang's Attack on the Argentine National Securities Commission

The Medusa ransomware gang has attacked the Argentine National Securities Commission. The National Securities Commission is the regulatory authority responsible for overseeing and regulating the securities market in Argentina. It was established in 1968 and operates under the authority of the Ministry of Economy and Public Finance.

The Medusa ransomware gang claimed to have attacked the National Securities Commission on June 7th, saying it would release 1.5TB of stolen information within a week if it did not receive a ransom payment of $500,000.

Background of the Medusa Ransomware Gang

The Medusa gang made its debut in the summer of 2021 and has evolved to be one of the more active RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) platforms in late 2022. The attackers restart infected machines in safe mode to avoid detection by security software as well preventing recovery by deleting local backups, disabling startup recovery options, and deleting shadow copies.

Medusa ramped up attacks in the latter part of 2022 and has been one of the most 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.

Method of Attack

The Medusa ransomware gang (not to be confused with the operators of the earlier MedusaLocker) ransomware typically compromises victim networks through malicious email attachments (macros), torrent websites, or through malicious ad libraries. Medusa can terminate over 280 Windows services and processes without command line arguments.