Black Basta operator attempted to exploit zero-day vulnerability.
The group behind the Black Basta ransomware may have been exploiting a recently-patched Windows privilege escalation vulnerability as a zero-day.
According to threat research by Symantec, if CVE-2024-26169 is exploited on affected systems, it can permit an attacker to elevate their privileges.
Although the vulnerability was patched on March 12, analysis of an exploit tool deployed in recent attacks revealed evidence that an exploit could have been compiled prior to patching, meaning at least one group may have been exploiting the vulnerability as a zero-day.
It has been detected that the exploit tool was deployed in a recent attempted ransomware attack, investigated by Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team.
Although the attackers did not succeed in deploying a ransomware payload in this attack, the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used were highly similar to those described in a recent Microsoft report detailing Black Basta activity.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
