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The FBIβs takedown of the LockBit ransomware group last week came as LockBit was preparing to release sensitive data stolen from government computer systems in Fulton County, Ga. But LockBit is now regrouping, and the gang says it will publish the stolen Fulton County data on March 2 unless paid a ransom. LockBit claims the cache includes documents tied to the countyβs ongoing criminal prosecution of former President Trump, but court watchers say teaser documents published by the crime gang suggest a total leak of the Fulton County data could put lives at risk and jeopardize a number of other criminal trials.
A new LockBit website listing a countdown timer until the promised release of data stolen from Fulton County, Ga.
In early February, Fulton County leaders acknowledged they were responding to an intrusion that caused disruptions for its phone, email and billing systems, as well as a range of county services, including court systems.
On Feb. 13, the LockBit ransomware group posted on its victim shaming blog a new entry for Fulton County, featuring a countdown timer saying the group would publish the data on Feb. 16 unless county leaders agreed to negotiate a ransom.
βWe will demonstrate how local structures negligently handled information protection,β LockBit warned. βWe will reveal lists of individuals responsible for confidentiality. Documents marked as confidential will be made publicly available. We will show documents related to access to the state citizensβ personal data. We aim to give maximum publicity to this situation; the documents will be of interest to many. Conscientious residents will bring order.β
Yet on Feb. 16, the entry for Fulton County was removed from LockBitβs site without explanation. This usually only happens after the victim in question agrees to pay a ransom demand and/or enters into negotiations with their extortionists.
However, Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said the board decided it βcould not in good conscience use Fulton County taxpayer funds to make a payment.β
βWe did not pay nor did anyone pay on our behalf,β Pitts said at an incident briefing on Feb. 20.
Just hours before that press conference, LockBitβs various websites were seized by the FBI and the U.K.βs National Crime Agency (NCA), which replaced the ransomware groupβs homepage with a seizure notice and used the existing design of LockBitβs victim shaming blog to publish press releases about the law enforcement action.
The feds used the existing design on LockBitβs victim shaming website to feature press releases and free decryption tools.
Dubbed βOperation Cronos,β the effort involved the seizure of nearly three-dozen servers; the arrest of two alleged LockBit members; the release of a free LockBit decryption tool; and the freezing of more than 200 cryptocurrency accounts thought to be tied to the gangβs activities. The government says LockBit has claimed more than 2,000 victims worldwide and extorted over $120 million in payments.
In a lengthy, rambling letter published on Feb. 24 and addressed to the FBI, the ransomware groupβs leader LockBitSupp announced that their victim shaming websites were once again operational on the dark web, with fresh countdown timers for Fulton County and a half-dozen other recent victims.
βThe FBI decided to hack now for one reason only, because they didnβt want to leak information fultoncountyga.gov,β LockBitSupp wrote. βThe stolen documents contain a lot of interesting things and Donald Trumpβs court cases that could affect the upcoming US election.β
A screen shot released by LockBit showing various Fulton County file shares that were exposed.
LockBit has already released roughly two dozen files allegedly stolen from Fulton County government systems, although none of them involve Mr. Trumpβs criminal trial. But the documents do appear to include court records that are sealed and shielded from public viewing.
George Chidi writes The Atlanta Objective, a Substack publication on crime in Georgiaβs capital city. Chidi says the leaked data so far includes a sealed record related to a child abuse case, and a sealed motion in the murder trial of Juwuan Gaston demanding the state turn over confidential informant identities.
Chidi cites reports from a Fulton County employee who said the confidential material includes the identities of jurors serving on the trial of the rapper Jeffery βYoung Thugβ Williams, who is charged along with five other defendants in a racketeering and gang conspiracy.
βThe screenshots suggest that hackers will be able to give any attorney defending a criminal case in the county a starting place to argue that evidence has been tainted or witnesses intimidated, and that the release of confidential information has compromised cases,β Chidi wrote. βJudge Ural Glanville has, I am told by staff, been working feverishly behind the scenes over the last two weeks to manage the unfolding disaster.β
LockBitSupp also denied assertions made by the U.K.βs NCA that LockBit did not delete stolen data as promised when victims agreed to pay a ransom. The accusation is an explosive one because nobody will pay a ransom if they donβt believe the ransomware group will hold up its end of the bargain.
The ransomware group leader also confirmed information first reported here last week, that federal investigators managed to hack LockBit by exploiting a known vulnerability in PHP, a scripting language that is widely used in Web development.
βDue to my personal negligence and irresponsibility I relaxed and did not update PHP in time,β LockBitSupp wrote. βAs a result of which access was gained to the two main servers where this version of PHP was installed.β
LockBitSuppβs FBI letter said the group kept copies of its stolen victim data on servers that did not use PHP, and that consequently it was able to retain copies of files stolen from victims. The letter also listed links to multiple new instances of LockBit dark net websites, including the leak page listing Fulton Countyβs new countdown timer.
LockBitβs new data leak site promises to release stolen Fulton County data on March 2, 2024, unless paid a ransom demand.
βEven after the FBI hack, the stolen data will be published on the blog, there is no chance of destroying the stolen data without payment,β LockBitSupp wrote. βAll FBI actions are aimed at destroying the reputation of my affiliate program, my demoralization, they want me to leave and quit my job, they want to scare me because they can not find and eliminate me, I can not be stopped, you can not even hope, as long as I am alive I will continue to do pentest with postpaid.β
In January 2024, LockBitSupp told XSS forum members he was disappointed the FBI hadnβt offered a reward for his doxing and/or arrest, and that in response he was placing a bounty on his own head β offering $10 million to anyone who could discover his real name.
After the NCA and FBI seized LockBitβs site, the groupβs homepage was retrofitted with a blog entry titled, βWho is LockBitSupp? The $10M question.β The teaser made use of LockBitβs own countdown timer, and suggested the real identity of LockBitSupp would soon be revealed.
However, after the countdown timer expired the page was replaced with a taunting message from the feds, but it included no new information about LockBitSuppβs identity.
On Feb. 21, the U.S. Department of State announced rewards totaling up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of anyone participating in LockBit ransomware attacks. The State Department said $10 million of that is for information on LockBitβs leaders, and up to $5 million is offered for information on affiliates.
In an interview with the malware-focused Twitter/X account Vx-Underground, LockBit staff asserted that authorities had arrested a couple of small-time players in their operation, and that investigators still do not know the real-life identities of the core LockBit members, or that of their leader.
βThey assert the FBI / NCA UK / EUROPOL do not know their information,β Vx-Underground wrote. βThey state they are willing to double the bounty of $10,000,000. They state they will place a $20,000,000 bounty of their own head if anyone can dox them.β
In the weeks leading up to the FBI/NCA takedown, LockBitSupp became embroiled in a number of high-profile personal and business disputes on the Russian cybercrime forums.
Earlier this year, someone used LockBit ransomware to infect the networks of AN-Security, a venerated 30-year-old security and technology company based in St. Petersburg, Russia. This violated the golden rule for cybercriminals based in Russia and former soviet nations that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States, which is that attacking your own citizens in those countries is the surest way to get arrested and prosecuted by local authorities.
LockBitSupp later claimed the attacker had used a publicly leaked, older version of LockBit to compromise systems at AN-Security, and said the attack was an attempt to smear their reputation by a rival ransomware group known as βClop.β But the incident no doubt prompted closer inspection of LockBitSuppβs activities by Russian authorities.
Then in early February, the administrator of the Russian-language cybercrime forum XSS said LockBitSupp had threatened to have him killed after the ransomware group leader was banned by the community. LockBitSupp was excommunicated from XSS after he refused to pay an arbitration amount ordered by the forum administrator. That dispute related to a complaint from another forum member who said LockBitSupp recently stiffed him on his promised share of an unusually large ransomware payout.
A posted by the XSS administrator saying LockBitSupp wanted him dead.
KrebsOnSecurity sought comment from LockBitSupp at the ToX instant messenger ID listed in his letter to the FBI. LockBitSupp declined to elaborate on the unreleased documents from Fulton County, saying the files will be available for everyone to see in a few days.
LockBitSupp said his team was still negotiating with Fulton County when the FBI seized their servers, which is why the county has been granted a time extension. He also denied threatening to kill the XSS administrator.
βI have not threatened to kill the XSS administrator, he is blatantly lying, this is to cause self-pity and damage my reputation,β LockBitSupp told KrebsOnSecurity. βIt is not necessary to kill him to punish him, there are more humane methods and he knows what they are.β
Asked why he was so certain the FBI doesnβt know his real-life identity, LockBitSupp was more precise.
βIβm not sure the FBI doesnβt know who I am,β he said. βI just believe they will never find me.β
It seems unlikely that the FBIβs seizure of LockBitβs infrastructure was somehow an effort to stave off the disclosure of Fulton Countyβs data, as LockBitSupp maintains. For one thing, Europol said the takedown was the result of a months-long infiltration of the ransomware group.
Also, in reporting on the attackβs disruption to the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Feb. 14, CNN reported that by then the intrusion by LockBit had persisted for nearly two and a half weeks.
Finally, if the NCA and FBI really believed that LockBit never deleted victim data, they had to assume LockBit would still have at least one copy of all their stolen data hidden somewhere safe.
Fulton County is still trying to recover systems and restore services affected by the ransomware attack. βFulton County continues to make substantial progress in restoring its systems following the recent ransomware incident resulting in service outages,β reads the latest statement from the county on Feb. 22. βSince the start of this incident, our team has been working tirelessly to bring services back up.β
Update, Feb. 29, 3:22 p.m. ET: Just hours after this story ran, LockBit changed its countdown timer for Fulton County saying they had until the morning of Feb. 29 (today) to pay a ransonm demand. When the official deadline neared today, Fulton Countyβs listing was removed from LockBitβs victim shaming website. Asked about the removal of the listing, LockBitβs leader βLockBitSuppβ told KrebsOnSecurity that Fulton County paid a ransom demand. County officials have scheduled a press conference on the ransomware attack at 4:15 p.m. ET today.
The Minnesota-based Internet provider U.S. Internet Corp. has a business unit called Securence, which specializes in providing filtered, secure email services to businesses, educational institutions and government agencies worldwide. But until it was notified last week, U.S. Internet was publishing more than a decadeβs worth of its internal email β and that of thousands of Securence clients β in plain text out on the Internet and just a click away for anyone with a Web browser.
Headquartered in Minnetonka, Minn., U.S. Internet is a regional ISP that provides fiber and wireless Internet service. The ISPβs Securence division bills itself βa leading provider of email filtering and management software that includes email protection and security services for small business, enterprise, educational and government institutions worldwide.β
U.S. Internet/Securence says your email is secure. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Roughly a week ago, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by Hold Security, a Milwaukee-based cybersecurity firm. Hold Security founder Alex Holden said his researchers had unearthed a public link to a U.S. Internet email server listing more than 6,500 domain names, each with its own clickable link.
A tiny portion of the more than 6,500 customers who trusted U.S. Internet with their email.
Drilling down into those individual domain links revealed inboxes for each employee or user of these exposed host names. Some of the emails dated back to 2008; others were as recent as the present day.
Securence counts among its customers dozens of state and local governments, including: nc.gov β the official website of North Carolina; stillwatermn.gov, the website for the city of Stillwater, Minn.; and cityoffrederickmd.gov, the website for the government of Frederick, Md.
Incredibly, included in this giant index of U.S. Internet customer emails were the internal messages for every current and former employee of U.S. Internet and its subsidiary USI Wireless. Since that index also included the messages of U.S. Internetβs CEO Travis Carter, KrebsOnSecurity forwarded one of Mr. Carterβs own recent emails to him, along with a request to understand how exactly the company managed to screw things up so spectacularly.
Individual inboxes of U.S. Wireless employees were published in clear text on the Internet.
Within minutes of that notification, U.S. Internet pulled all of the published inboxes offline. Mr. Carter responded and said his team was investigating how it happened. In the same breath, the CEO asked if KrebsOnSecurity does security consulting for hire (I do not).
[Authorβs note: Perhaps Mr. Carter was frantically casting about for any expertise he could find in a tough moment. But I found the request personally offensive, because I couldnβt shake the notion that maybe the company was hoping it could buy my silence.]
Earlier this week, Mr. Carter replied with a highly technical explanation that ultimately did little to explain why or how so many internal and customer inboxes were published in plain text on the Internet.
βThe feedback from my team was a issue with the Ansible playbookΒ that controls the Nginx configuration for our IMAP servers,β Carter said, noting that this incorrect configuration was put in place by a former employee and never caught. U.S. Internet has not shared how long these messages were exposed.
βThe rest of the platform and other backend services are being audited to verify the Ansible playbooks are correct,β Carter said.
Holden said he also discovered that hackers have been abusing a Securence link scrubbing and anti-spam service called Url-Shield to create links that look benign but instead redirect visitors to hacked and malicious websites.
βThe bad guys modify the malicious link reporting into redirects to their own malicious sites,β Holden said. βThatβs how the bad guys drive traffic to their sites and increase search engine rankings.β
For example, clicking the Securence link shown in the screenshot directly above leads one to a website that tries to trick visitors into allowing site notifications by couching the request as a CAPTCHA request designed to separate humans from bots. After approving the deceptive CAPTCHA/notification request, the link forwards the visitor to a Russian internationalized domain name (ΡΠΏΡΠΎΠ°Π³[.]ΡΡ).
The link to this malicious and deceptive website was created using Securenceβs link-scrubbing service. Notification pop-ups were blocked when this site tried to disguise a prompt for accepting notifications as a form of CAPTCHA.
U.S. Internet has not responded to questions about how long it has been exposing all of its internal and customer emails, or when the errant configuration changes were made. The company also still has not disclosed the incident on its website. The last press release on the site dates back to March 2020.
KrebsOnSecurity has been writing about data breaches for nearly two decades, but this one easily takes the cake in terms of the level of incompetence needed to make such a huge mistake unnoticed. Iβm not sure what the proper response from authorities or regulators should be to this incident, but itβs clear that U.S. Internet should not be allowed to manage anyoneβs email unless and until it can demonstrate more transparency, and prove that it has radically revamped its security.
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