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News



FREE TOOL UNLOCKS SOME ENCRYPTED DATA IN RANSOMWARE ATTACKS

"White Phoenix" automated tool for recovering data on partially encrypted files
hit with ransomware is available on GitHub.
Jai Vijayan
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
May 10, 2023
Source: Xcages via Shutterstock
PDF


Good news for ransomware victims: Researchers have released a free tool on
GitHub that they say can help victims of intermittent encryption attacks recover
data from some types of partially encrypted files — without having to pay a
ransom for the decryption key.



Intermittent encryption is an approach where a ransomware operator only
partially encrypts targeted files—instead of the entire file—to speed up
encryption, impact more files, and to make detection harder. In recent months,
several ransomware groups including BlackCat and Play have used the approach in
attacks on hundreds of organizations worldwide. The victims of these attacks
have included hospitals, banks, and universities.

Fortunately for such victims, data in some types of partially encrypted files
can be decrypted given the right circumstances, security vendor Cyberark said in
a report this week. That's because many file formats including PDF and formats
that Microsoft Office adhere to contain certain common parameters, which, even
if encrypted, can be reconstructed relatively easily in a manner to make data
recovery possible.

For instance, files often have a <Header><Body><Footer> construction, says Andy
Thompson, global research evangelist at Cyberark.



"If partial encryption only wipes away the <header> portion of a [PDF for
example], and we know that all PDF's headers look the same way, you can piece
together the file so that it works again," he says.



As an example, Thompson points to an original file that might have a <Head
123><Body 456> and <Footer 789> construction. If an intermittent ransomware
sample only encrypted the header, the encrypted file might have a <head 12><body
456><footer 789> construction. "White Phoenix can identify that <header 12> is
<Header 123>, so it replaces the bad header with the good header, and you have a
functional file again," he says.


WHITE PHOENIX

Cyberark built a tool it calls "White Phoenix" that automates the process of
recovering data from intermittently encrypted documents in various file formats.
These include PDF; Word formats such as docx and docm; Excel formats such as
xlxm, xltx, and extm; PowerPoint formats such as pptx, pptm, and ptox; and Zip.
All that White Phoneix needs is the path to the partially encrypted file and a
path to a folder to save recovered content, Cyberark said.

"Just like there are many tools to help recover data from corrupted files, there
can be tools to recover data from files that have undergone intermittent
encryption," the security vendor said. It's available via GitHub.



Cyberark researchers tested White Phoenix against documents that BlackCat had
encrypted; they believe it can work on files that other malware tools such as
Play, Qilin, BianLian, and DarkBit might only partially encrypt.

"For White Phoenix to recover partially encrypted files, there needs to be
unencrypted parts of the data that can be salvaged, "Thompson says. "If we are
able to repair or replace the portions of the damaged files, we may be able to
recover the data contained in the file."


BLURRED LINES

Intermittent encryption is a trend that, in a sense, started with LockBit
ransomware in 2021. In a report last September, researchers from SentinelOne
described how their analysis of LockFile showed the malware encrypting only
every other 16 bytes of a file. They found the threat actor encrypting files
just enough to make them unusable so they could infect more systems in a shorter
time frame than would be possible with full disk encryption.

Since LockFile, several other threat actors have adopted intermittent encryption
as well because the approach also gives them an opportunity to sneak their
malware past detection systems designed to look at the amount of content being
written to disk.

In BlackCat's case, Cyberark discovered the malware is configured with six
possible encryption modes. The malware, for instance, can do full file
encryption or it can encrypt just the head of the file. BlackCat can also break
files into equal sized chunks and then encrypt the first few bytes of each chunk
or encrypt them differently depending on the size and type of file.

"Intermittent encryption starts to blur the line between corrupting files and
making files truly unusable," Cyberark said. But "just like there are many tools
to help recover data from corrupted files, there can be tools to recover data
from files that have undergone intermittent encryption."

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