Kimberly Goody, Jeremy Kennelly, Jaideep Natu, Christopher Glyer write:
FireEye is tracking a set of financially-motivated activity referred to as TEMP.MixMaster that involves the interactive deployment of Ryuk ransomware following TrickBot malware infections. These operations have been active since at least December 2017, with a notable uptick in the latter half of 2018, and have proven to be highly successful at soliciting large ransom payments from victim organizations. In multiple incidents, rather than relying solely on built-in TrickBot capabilities, TEMP.MixMaster used EMPIRE and RDP connections to enable lateral movement within victim environments. Interactive deployment of ransomware, such as this, allows an attacker to perform valuable reconnaissance within the victim network and identify critical systems to maximize their disruption to business operations, ultimately increasing the likelihood an organization will pay the demanded ransom. These operations have reportedly netted about $3.7 million in current BTC value.
Read more on FireEye.