The Play Ransomware Gang's Attack on Primoteq

The Play ransomware gang has attacked Primoteq. Primoteq is a notable and well-established company operating in the industrial services and maintenance sector. With a strong presence in the market, the company has earned recognition for its expertise in providing comprehensive solutions and services for various industries. Primoteq's core focus lies in offering maintenance and technical support for critical assets and equipment, ensuring optimal performance and reliability. They serve a diverse clientele, including industries such as manufacturing, energy, logistics, and infrastructure.

Play posted Primoteq to its data leak site on July 25th, claiming to have stolen "private and personal confidential data, clients and employee documents, projects, contracts, finance, tax, and etc." The ransomware gang has threatened to publish all stolen data by July 29th if Primoteq fails to comply.

About Play Ransomware

Play (aka PlayCrypt) is a RaaS that 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 and 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 a ransom, but they have made good on their threats to leak the data of those who refuse payment. 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 has attacked outside that region. Play employs tactics similar to Hive and Nokoyawa ransomware and attempts double extortion by first exfiltrating victim data with the threat to post it on their leaks website.