# Ragnar ransomware gang hit 52 critical US orgs, says FBI

**[theregister.com/2022/03/09/fbi_says_ragnar_locker_ransomware/](https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/09/fbi_says_ragnar_locker_ransomware/)**

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle

**[Security](https://www.theregister.com/security/)**

## Energy biz, financial services, governments, and IT outfits targeted

[Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Wed 9 Mar 2022 // 02:05 UTC](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Jessica-Lyons-Hardcastle)
**8**

The Ragnar Locker ransomware gang has so far infected at least 52 critical infrastructure
organizations in America across sectors including manufacturing, energy, financial services,
government, and information technology, according to an FBI alert this week.

The Feds [said [PDF] they became aware in early 2020 of the ransomware crew and its](https://www.ic3.gov/Media/News/2022/220307.pdf)
preferred tactic: double extortion. The crooks steal sensitive data, encrypt a victim's systems,
and threaten to leak the stolen documents if the ransom to restore the files isn't paid.

[To date, the Ragnar Locker criminals have posted stolen data from at least ten organizations](https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/ragnar-locker/)
on their publicity website, according to Acronis. As of January, the gang has hit entities
across nearly a dozen critical sectors, according to the FBI flash alert, which provided
technical details about how the ransomware attacks work:


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RagnarLocker is identified by the extension .RGNR_<ID>, where <ID> is a hash of the
computer's NETBIOS name. The actors, identifying themselves as "RAGNAR_LOCKER,"
leave a .txt ransom note, with instructions on how to pay the ransom and decrypt the data.
RagnarLocker uses VMProtect, UPX, and custom packing algorithms and deploys within an
attacker's custom Windows XP virtual machine on a target's site.

The Ragnar Locker malware uses Windows API GetLocaleInfoW to identify the infected
machine's location. If the victim's locale is one of a dozen European and Asian countries,
including Russia and Ukraine, the infection process terminates.

As the ransomware is deployed, it kills services commonly used by managed service
providers to remotely control networks and attempts to silently delete all shadow copies of
documents so that users can't recover encrypted files.

And finally, Ragnar Locker encrypts organizations' data. But instead of choosing which files
to encrypt, it selects folders not to encrypt. "Taking this approach allows the computer to
continue to operate 'normally' while the malware encrypts files with known and unknown
extensions containing data of value to the victim," the FBI explained.

For example, if the logical drive being processed is the C: drive, the malware does not
encrypt files in folders names Windows, Windows.old, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Tor browser,
Internet Explorer, $Recycle.Bin, Program Data, Google, Opera, or Opera Software.

The FBI urged victims to report ransomware attacks to their local field office. And while it
"does not encourage paying a ransom to criminal actors," it acknowledged that this can be a
tricky business decision. Executives should "evaluate all options to protect their
shareholders, employees, and customers," before deciding whether to pay, it added. ®

### Other stories you might like


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Stolen university credentials up for sale by Russian crooks, FBI warns

Forget dark-web souks, thousands of these are already being traded on public bazaars

[Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Fri 27 May 2022 // 22:34 UTC](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Jessica-Lyons-Hardcastle)
Russian crooks are selling network credentials and virtual private network access for a
"multitude" of US universities and colleges on criminal marketplaces, according to the
FBI.

According to a warning issued on Thursday, these stolen credentials sell for thousands
of dollars on both dark web and public internet forums, and could lead to subsequent
cyberattacks against individual employees or the schools themselves.

"The exposure of usernames and passwords can lead to brute force credential stuffing
computer network attacks, whereby attackers attempt logins across various internet
sites or exploit them for subsequent cyber attacks as criminal actors take advantage of
users recycling the same credentials across multiple accounts, internet sites, and
[services," the Feds' alert [PDF] said.](https://www.ic3.gov/Media/News/2022/220526.pdf)

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/fbi_warning_stolen_university_credentials/?td=keepreading-btm)
Big Tech loves talking up privacy – while trying to kill privacy legislation

Study claims Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft work to derail data rules

[Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Fri 27 May 2022 // 21:48 UTC 2](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Thomas-Claburn)
Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft often support privacy in public
statements, but behind the scenes they've been working through some common
organizations to weaken or kill privacy legislation in US states.

[That's according to a report this week from news non-profit The Markup, which said the](https://themarkup.org/privacy/2022/05/26/tech-industry-groups-are-watering-down-attempts-at-privacy-regulation-one-state-at-a-time)
corporations hire lobbyists from the same few groups and law firms to defang or drown
state privacy bills.

The report examined 31 states when state legislatures were considering privacy
legislation and identified 445 lobbyists and lobbying firms working on behalf of Amazon,
Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, along with industry groups like TechNet and the
State Privacy and Security Coalition.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/big_tech_privacy/?td=keepreading-btm)


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SEC probes Musk for not properly disclosing Twitter stake

Meanwhile, social network's board rejects resignation of one its directors

[Katyanna Quach Fri 27 May 2022 // 21:26 UTC 3](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Katyanna-Quach)
America's financial watchdog is investigating whether Elon Musk adequately disclosed
his purchase of Twitter shares last month, just as his bid to take over the social media
company hangs in the balance.

[A letter [PDF] from the SEC addressed to the tech billionaire said he "[did] not appear"](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000000000022003713/filename1.pdf)
[to have filed the proper form detailing his 9.2 percent stake in Twitter "required 10 days](https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/04/elon_musk_twitter/)
from the date of acquisition," and asked him to provide more information. Musk's
shares made him one of Twitter's largest shareholders. The letter is dated April 4, and
was shared this week by the regulator.

Musk quickly moved to try and buy the whole company outright in a deal initially worth
[over $44 billion. Musk sold a chunk of his shares in Tesla worth $8.4 billion and bagged](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/05/musk_twitter_ellison/)
[another $7.14 billion from investors to help finance the $21 billion he promised to put](https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/21/musk_twitter_funding/)
forward for the deal. The remaining $25.5 billion bill was secured via debt financing by
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, and others. But the takeover is not going
smoothly.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/the_sec_is_probing_elon/?td=keepreading-btm)

Cloud security unicorn cuts 20% of staff after raising $1.3b

Time to play blame bingo: Markets? Profits? Too much growth? Russia? Space aliens?

[Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Fri 27 May 2022 // 19:19 UTC 6](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Jessica-Lyons-Hardcastle)
Cloud security company Lacework has laid off 20 percent of its employees, just months
after two record-breaking funding rounds pushed its valuation to $8.3 billion.

A spokesperson wouldn't confirm the total number of employees affected, though told
_The Register that the "widely speculated number on Twitter is a significant_
overestimate."

[The company, as of March, counted more than 1,000 employees, which would push](https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/17/cybersecurity-has-53-unicorns-here-are-10-to-watch/)
the jobs lost above 200. And the widely reported number on Twitter is about 300
employees. The biz, based in Silicon Valley, was founded in 2015.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/lacework_cuts_jobs/?td=keepreading-btm)


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Talos names eight deadly sins in widely used industrial software

Entire swaths of gear relies on vulnerability-laden Open Automation Software (OAS)

[Jeff Burt Fri 27 May 2022 // 18:30 UTC](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Jeff-Burt)
A researcher at Cisco's Talos threat intelligence team found eight vulnerabilities in the
Open Automation Software (OAS) platform that, if exploited, could enable a bad actor
to access a device and run code on a targeted system.

The OAS platform is widely used by a range of industrial enterprises, essentially
facilitating the transfer of data within an IT environment between hardware and
software and playing a central role in organizations' industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
efforts. It touches a range of devices, including PLCs and OPCs and IoT devices, as
well as custom applications and APIs, databases and edge systems.

Companies like Volvo, General Dynamics, JBT Aerotech and wind-turbine maker AES
are among the users of the OAS platform.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/talos-aos-vulnerabilities/?td=keepreading-btm)
Despite global uncertainty, $500m hit doesn't rattle Nvidia execs

CEO acknowledges impact of war, pandemic but says fundamentals ‘are really good’

[Dylan Martin Fri 27 May 2022 // 16:08 UTC 1](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Dylan-Martin)
Nvidia is expecting a $500 million hit to its global datacenter and consumer business in
the second quarter due to COVID lockdowns in China and Russia's invasion of
Ukraine. Despite those and other macroeconomic concerns, executives are still
optimistic about future prospects.

"The full impact and duration of the war in Ukraine and COVID lockdowns in China is
difficult to predict. However, the impact of our technology and our market opportunities
remain unchanged," said Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO and co-founder, during the
company's first-quarter earnings call.

Those two statements might sound a little contradictory, including to some investors,
[particularly following the stock selloff yesterday after concerns over Russia and China](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/26/nvidia_q1fy2023_outlook/)
prompted Nvidia to issue lower-than-expected guidance for second-quarter revenue.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/nvidia_shrugs_off_global_chaos/?td=keepreading-btm)


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Another AI supercomputer from HPE: Champollion lands in France

That's the second in a week following similar system in Munich also aimed at
researchers

[Dan Robinson Fri 27 May 2022 // 15:30 UTC](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Dan-Robinson)
HPE is lifting the lid on a new AI supercomputer – the second this week – aimed at
building and training larger machine learning models to underpin research.

Based at HPE's Center of Excellence in Grenoble, France, the new supercomputer is
to be named Champollion after the French scholar who made advances in deciphering
Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 19th century. It was built in partnership with Nvidia using
AMD-based Apollo computer nodes fitted with Nvidia's A100 GPUs.

Champollion brings together HPC and purpose-built AI technologies to train machine
learning models at scale and unlock results faster, HPE said. HPE already provides
HPC and AI resources from its Grenoble facilities for customers, and the broader
research community to access, and said it plans to provide access to Champollion for
scientists and engineers globally to accelerate testing of their AI models and research.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/hpe_champollion_supercomputer/?td=keepreading-btm)
Workday nearly doubles losses as waves of deals pushed back

Figures disappoint analysts as SaaSy HR and finance application vendor navigates
economic uncertainty

[Lindsay Clark Fri 27 May 2022 // 14:30 UTC 9](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Lindsay-Clark)
HR and finance application vendor Workday's CEO, Aneel Bhusri, confirmed deal wins
expected for the three-month period ending April 30 were being pushed back until later
in 2022.

The SaaS company boss was speaking as Workday recorded an operating loss of
[$72.8 million in its first quarter [PDF] of fiscal '23, nearly double the $38.3 million loss](https://www.workday.com/content/dam/web/en-us/documents/investor/workday-fiscal-2023-first-quarter-investor-presentation.pdf)
recorded for the same period a year earlier. Workday also saw revenue increase to
$1.43 billion in the period, up 22 percent year-on-year.

However, the company increased its revenue guidance for the full financial year. It said
revenues would be between $5.537 billion and $5.557 billion, an increase of 22 percent
on earlier estimates.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/workday_near_doubles_losses_as/?td=keepreading-btm)


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UK monopoly watchdog investigates Google s online advertising business

Another probe? Mountain View is starting to look like a pincushion at this rate

[Richard Currie Fri 27 May 2022 // 14:00 UTC 3](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Richard-Currie)
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is lining up yet another investigation into
Google over its dominance of the digital advertising market.

This latest inquiry, [announced Thursday, is the second major UK antitrust investigation](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/google-probed-over-potential-abuse-of-dominance-in-ad-tech)
into Google this year alone. In March this year the UK, together with the European
[Union, said it wished to examine Google's "Jedi Blue" agreement with Meta to allegedly](https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/11/cma_ec_blue_jedi/)
favor the former's Open Bidding ads platform.

[The news also follows proposals last week by a bipartisan group of US lawmakers to](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/19/senate_ctda_advertising/)
create legislation that could force Alphabet's Google, Meta's Facebook, and Amazon to
divest portions of their ad businesses.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/cma_google_ad_dominance/?td=keepreading-btm)
Microsoft slows some hiring for Windows, Teams, and Office

'Making sure the right resources are aligned to the right opportunity' ahead of next
fiscal year

[Richard Speed Fri 27 May 2022 // 13:31 UTC 5](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Richard-Speed)
Microsoft has hit the brakes on hiring in some key product areas as the company
prepares for the next fiscal year and all that might bring.

[According to reports in the Bloomberg, the unit that develops Windows, Office, and](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-26/microsoft-to-slow-hiring-in-windows-office-teams-chat-groups?srnd=technology-vp)
Teams is affected and while headcount remains expected to grow, new hires in that
division must first be approved by bosses.

During a talk this week at JP Morgan's Technology, Media and Communications
Conference, Rajesh Jha, executive VP for the Office Product Group, noted that within
three years he expected approximately two-thirds of CIOs to standardize on Microsoft
Teams. 1.4 billion PCs were running Windows. He also remarked: "We have lots of
room here to grow the seats with Office 365."

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/microsoft_hiring_paused/?td=keepreading-btm)


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Recession fears only stoking enterprise tech spending for Dell, others

Staving off entropy with digital transformation, hybrid office, and automation projects

[Paul Kunert Fri 27 May 2022 // 13:00 UTC](https://www.theregister.com/Author/Paul-Kunert)
Enterprises are still kitting out their workforce with the latest computers and refreshing
their datacenter hardware despite a growing number of "uncertainties" in the world.

This is according to hardware tech bellwethers including Dell, which turned over $26.1
[billion in sales for its Q1 of fiscal 2023 ended 29 April, a year-on-year increase of 16](https://investors.delltechnologies.com/news-releases/news-release-details/dell-technologies-delivers-record-first-quarter-fiscal-2023)
percent.

"We are seeing a shift in spend from consumer and PCs to datacenter infrastructure,"
said Jeff Clarke, vice-chairman and co-chief operating officer. "IT demand is currently
healthy," he added.

[Continue reading](https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/enterprise_tech_spending_up/?td=keepreading-btm)


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