The Play Ransomware Gang's Attack on Centek Industries

The Play ransomware gang has attacked Centek Industries. Centek Industries is a company that specializes in manufacturing marine exhaust systems and related products. The company's primary focus is on designing and producing advanced solutions for the exhaust needs of marine engines.

Play posted Centek Industries to its data leak site on October 10th, threatening to publish “private and personal confidential data, clients documents, contracts, IDs, passports, payroll, tax, finance information and etc” if the organization fails to pay an undisclosed ransom by October 13th.

Background on Play Ransomware

Play (aka PlayCrypt) is a RaaS emerged in the summer of 2022 with high-profile attacks on the City of Oakland, Argentina's Judiciary and German hotel chain H-Hotels, as well as exfiltrating data from Fedpol and the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCBS). Play has similarities to Hive and Nokoyawa ransomware.

Play often compromises unpatched Fortinet SSL VPN vulnerabilities to gain access. Play has been observed leveraging Process Hacker, GMER, IOBit and PowerTool to bypass security solutions as well as PowerShell or command script to disable Windows Defender.

Play continued to increase attacks through the end of 2022 and into Q1 of 2023 and is one of the most active groups today. There is little information on how much Play demands for a ransom, but they have made good on their threats to leak the data of those who refuse payment.

Techniques and Tactics

Play is an evolving RaaS platform known to leverage PowerTool to disable antivirus tools and security monitoring solutions and SystemBC RAT for persistence. Play is known to leverage tools like Cobalt Strike for post-compromise lateral movement and SystemBC RAT executables and legitimate tools Plink and AnyDesk to maintain persistence, as well as Mimikatz and living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) techniques.

Play also abuses AdFind for command-line queries to collect information from a target’s Active Directory. Play innovated the intermittent encryption technique for improved evasion capabilities.

Geographical Focus and Tactics

Play ransomware gang has mainly focused attacks in Latin America, especially Brazil, but have attack outside of that region. Play employs tactics similar to both Hive and Nokoyawa ransomware, and also attempts double extortion by first exfiltrating victim data with the threat to post it on their leaks website.