Update on the Trellix breach we covered May 2: RansomHouse claimed the attack on its leak site Thursday and published screenshots that suggest the intrusion reached well beyond the source code repository Trellix originally acknowledged. Cybernews researchers reviewed the dumped images and identified internal dashboards for VMware vCenter, Rubrik backup, and Dell EMC storage - the systems that hold backups, credentials, and virtual machine images for the entire company. RansomHouse says the intrusion happened April 17 and resulted in data encryption. Trellix told BleepingComputer it's 'aware of claims of responsibility' and looking into them. RansomHouse currently lists 170+ victims on its Tor leak site.
Researchers found a serious bug in VECT 2.0, a new ransomware family making the rounds: the encryption routine corrupts any file larger than about 131 KB instead of encrypting it reversibly. Files smaller than the threshold encrypt and decrypt normally; everything bigger gets permanently destroyed. Operators don't seem to know yet, so victims who pay get a working decryption tool that recovers small files and tells them the large ones are 'corrupted' - which they are, because VECT broke them on the way in. The bug affects Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi variants. Any large file on a VECT 2.0-hit system is irrecoverable regardless of whether the ransom is paid.
A new ransomware family called Kyber has been deployed in attacks combining a Rust-based Windows encryptor with a Linux ESXi variant on the same victim network, and its Windows build is one of the first in the wild to advertise post-quantum cryptography. Rapid7 analysed both variants during a March 2026 incident response and found the Windows build genuinely uses Kyber1024 (a NIST-selected post-quantum key-encapsulation algorithm) plus X25519 to wrap the AES-CTR keys that actually encrypt files, matching its ransom-note claims. The Linux ESXi variant makes the same post-quantum marketing claim but actually uses ChaCha8 with RSA-4096 - pure marketing theatre rather than real crypto defense. For victims the distinction does not matter: without the attacker's private key the files are unrecoverable regardless of algorithm. Windows-encrypted files get a '.#~~~' extension; Linux gets '.xhsyw'. The ESXi variant enumerates all VMs, encrypts datastore files, defaces management interfaces, adds crontab persistence, and terminates VMs. The Windows variant deletes shadow copies, disables boot repair, kills SQL/Exchange/backup services, clears event logs, wipes the Recycle Bin, and ships with an experimental Hyper-V shutdown feature. Only one victim appears on the Kyber leak site so far (a multi-billion-dollar American defence contractor and IT services provider), meaning most current victims are still in the extortion window and not publicly known.
Check Point researchers gained visibility into a SystemBC command-and-control server used by an affiliate of The Gentlemen ransomware-as-a-service operation and found over 1,570 compromised corporate networks that have not been publicly disclosed. The group's own data leak site only lists about 320 victims, meaning the real footprint is nearly 5x larger than public reporting suggests. The Gentlemen emerged in July 2025 and has become one of the most prolific RaaS operations. It uses a Go-based locker targeting Windows, Linux, NAS, and BSD systems, operates a classic double-extortion model, and abuses legitimate drivers plus custom tooling to bypass defenses. SystemBC is a SOCKS5 tunneling proxy that uses RC4-encrypted C2 communications and can download and execute additional malware in memory. Attack chain: initial access via internet-facing services or compromised credentials, followed by reconnaissance, Cobalt Strike deployment, SystemBC tunneling, lateral movement using Group Policy Objects for domain-wide compromise, then the encryptor. A notable TTP: during lateral movement, The Gentlemen pushes a PowerShell script that disables Windows Defender real-time monitoring, adds broad exclusions for staging shares and its own process, shuts down the firewall, re-enables SMB1, and loosens LSA anonymous access controls before deploying the ransomware binary on each reachable host. The ESXi variant shuts down virtual machines, adds persistence via crontab, and inhibits recovery. Victim geography spans US, UK, Germany, Australia, and Romania.
TrustStrike Labs