Akira

Evaluating an Akira sample found on Vx Underground. Previously known malicious software.

MD5: 503f112e243519a1b9e0344499561908 SHA256: 1b6af2fbbc636180dd7bae825486ccc45e42aefbb304d5f83fafca4d637c13cc

Compiler: MSVC Linker: MS LINKER

Function Imports

KERNEL32.dll

114 function calls - Will update here after finding the purpose of some.

ADVAPI32.dll

CryptEncrypt CryptAcquireContextW CryptGenRandom

CRYPT32.dll

CryptDecodeObjectEx CryptStringToBinaryA CryptImportPublicKeyInfo

WTSAPI32.dll

WTSEnumerateProcessesW WTSFreeMemory

RstrtMgr.DLL

RmStartSession RmRegisterResources RmEndSession RmGetList RmShutdown

Strings to note - Captured with FLOSS

Z:\akira\asio\include\asio\impl\co_spawn.hpp 
co_spawn_entry_point
powershell.exe -Command "Get-WmiObject Win32_Shadowcopy | Remove-WmiObject"

Ransom Note - Akira_readme.txt

akira_readme.txt
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----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-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
Hi friends,
Whatever who you are and what your title is if you're reading this it means the internal infrastructure of your company is fully or partially dead, all your backups - virtual, physical - everything that we managed to reach - are completely removed. Moreover, we have taken a great amount of your corporate data prior to encryption.
Well, for now let's keep all the tears and resentment to ourselves and try to build a constructive dialogue. We're fully aware of what damage we caused by locking your internal sources. At the moment, you have to know:
1. Dealing with us you will save A LOT due to we are not interested in ruining your financially. We will study in depth your finance, bank & income statements, your savings, investments etc. and present our reasonable demand to you. If you have an active cyber insurance, let us know and we will guide you how to properly use it. Also, dragging out the negotiation process will lead to failing of a deal.
2. Paying us you save your TIME, MONEY, EFFORTS and be back on track within 24 hours approximately. Our decryptor works properly on any files or systems, so you will be able to check it by requesting a test decryption service from the beginning of our conversation. If you decide to recover on your own, keep in mind that you can permanently lose access to some files or accidently corrupt them - in this case we won't be able to help.
3. The security report or the exclusive first-hand information that you will receive upon reaching an agreement is of a great value, since NO full audit of your network will show you the vulnerabilities that we've managed to detect and used in order to get into, identify backup solutions and upload your data.
4. As for your data, if we fail to agree, we will try to sell personal information/trade secrets/databases/source codes - generally speaking, everything that has a value on the darkmarket - to multiple threat actors at ones. Then all of this will be published in our blog - https://akira[...]bad.onion.
5. We're more than negotiable and will definitely find the way to settle this quickly and reach an agreement which will satisfy both of us.
If you're indeed interested in our assistance and the services we provide you can reach out to us following simple instructions:
1. Install TOR Browser to get access to our chat room - https://www.torproject.org/download/.
2. Paste this link - https://akira[...]id.onion.
3. Use this code - [Alphanumeric code] - to log into our chat.
Keep in mind that the faster you will get in touch, the less damage we cause.

Dynamic Analysis

Running the program from the console as admin while having procmon running allows us to gather the following info:

• The program starts by opening registry keys inside HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control

  • Control Session Manager

  • SafeBoot

  • Srp\GP\DLL

  • FileSystem

• Then it opens all the DLLs. Some to note are:

  • bcryptprimitives.dll

  • crypt32.dll

  • ncrypt.dll

  • cryptbase.dll`

• The program will start creating ransom notes in every folder. Then it will encrypt and rewrite all files in each folder.

• Some files are excluded from the encryption:

  • .exe

  • .dll

  • .lnk

• Some folders are excluded from the encryption:

  • C:\Windows

• Renaming extensions from text files back to their original form allows to see some strings. However files will still be corrupted.