The Medusa Ransomware Attack on So Magic

The Medusa ransomware gang has attacked So Magic. So Magic is a French company that manufactures planchas. Planchas are versatile cooking devices that consist of a flat, smooth cooking surface, often made from materials like stainless steel, cast iron, or other heat-retaining materials. Medusa posted So Magic to its data leak site on October 3rd but provided no further details.

Introduction to Medusa RaaS

Medusa is a RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) that made its debut in the summer of 2021 and has evolved to be one of the more active RaaS 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.

Recent Activities and Tactics

Medusa ramped up attacks in the latter part of 2022 and have been 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 compromise 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, and there may be a Linux version as well, but it is unclear at this time.

Target Industries and Extortion Schemes

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.