Hive Ransomware Upgrades to Rust for More Sophisticated Encryption Method

The operators of the Hive ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme have overhauled their file-encrypting software to fully migrate to Rust and adopt a more sophisticated encryption method.

"With its latest variant carrying several major upgrades, Hive also proves it's one of the fastest evolving ransomware families, exemplifying the continuously changing ransomware ecosystem," Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said in a report on Tuesday.

Hive, which was first observed in June 2021, has emerged as one of the most prolific RaaS groups, accounting for 17 attacks in the month of May 2022 alone, alongside Black Basta and Conti.

The shift from GoLang to Rust makes Hive the second ransomware strain after BlackCat to be written in the programming language, enabling the malware to gain additional benefits such as memory safety and deeper control over low-level resources as well as make use of a wide range of cryptographic libraries.

What it also affords is the ability to render the malware resistant to reverse engineering, making it more evasive. Furthermore, it comes with features to stop services and processes associated with security solutions that may stop it in its tracks.

Hive is no different from other ransomware families in that it deletes backups to prevent recovery, but what's changed significantly in the new Rust-based variant is its approach to file encryption.

"Instead of embedding an encrypted key in each file that it encrypts, it generates two sets of keys in memory, uses them to encrypt files, and then encrypts and writes the sets to the root of the drive it encrypts, both with .key extension," MSTIC explained.

To determine which of the two keys is used for locking a specific file, an encrypted file is renamed to include the file name containing the key that's then followed by an underscore and a Base64-encoded string (e.g., "C:\myphoto.jpg.l0Zn68cb _ -B82BhIaGhI8") that points to two different locations in the corresponding .key file.

The findings come as the threat actor behind the lesser-known AstraLocker ransomware ceased operations and released a decryption tool as part of a shift to crytojacking, Bleeping Computer reported this week.

But in an indication that the cybercriminal landscape is in constant flux, cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new ransomware family called RedAlert (aka N13V) that's capable of targeting both Windows and Linux VMWare ESXi servers.

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