You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things
Speaker:backup recovery and cyber recovery.
Speaker:In this episode, we talk about ransomware as a service.
Speaker:My co-author, Dr. Mike Saylor, breaks down exactly how this criminal business
Speaker:model works and I do mean business.
Speaker:We're talking HR departments, project managers, affiliate programs, and yes.
Speaker:Someone managing the payroll, we covered the franchise model.
Speaker:How botnets get rented.
Speaker:Who's buying these attack privileges and why?
Speaker:The person who pays for the attack, it might just end up being the patsy.
Speaker:This is a must listen.
Speaker:By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.
Speaker:Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years.
Speaker:Ever since I had to tell my boss there were no backups of the production
Speaker:database that we had just lost.
Speaker:I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this.
Speaker:On this podcast, we turn unappreciated admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.
Speaker:This is the backup wrap up.
Speaker:Welcome to the backup wrap up.
Speaker:I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have with
Speaker:me Prasanna Hard Stop Malaiyandi.
Speaker:How's it going?
Speaker:Prasanna got somewhere to be.
Speaker:I think we should call you, uh, Curtis.
Speaker:Likes to chat a lot, Preston.
Speaker:I'll take it, I'll take it.
Speaker:That's like, it's the whole reason why I got a podcast.
Speaker:So I can, not only do I get to talk a lot, I get to listen to myself talk.
Speaker:That's why I say the podcast is a perfect thing to do if
Speaker:you like to hear yourself talk.
Speaker:'cause you get to do it.
Speaker:the exact opposite.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:That's why you don't edit and you don't listen.
Speaker:You don't listen to our podcast, right?
Speaker:I do watch the shorts every once in a while, but yes, I do not listen to
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:episode.
Speaker:I don't think I've listened to a single full episode.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:no, I take it back.
Speaker:I did listen to two episodes, both of which did not include me.
Speaker:It included when I was out.
Speaker:It included Ben
Speaker:Oh, the backup, the beer and backups.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:s and backup.
Speaker:where he got drunk while doing a podcast.
Speaker:That was the best, best podcast ever.
Speaker:All right, speaking of best podcast ever.
Speaker:How's it going, Mike?
Speaker:We got Dr. Mike Saylor on with us.
Speaker:It's going well.
Speaker:Hey guys.
Speaker:So, you know what?
Speaker:I've never, so we, we've never met in person, and so I, uh, I, I have no idea.
Speaker:Like, uh, like how tall you are, how tall are you?
Speaker:Six two.
Speaker:Yeah, he's taller than me.
Speaker:Prasanna, so now I'm gonna add him to my list.
Speaker:how it feels normal.
Speaker:So we had my 60th birthday party, uh, on Sunday, and Prasanna actually flew
Speaker:down to, to go and, uh, he got to meet a number of my other local friends.
Speaker:And let's just say, uh, he was not as tall as my other friends.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I had two friends that were six five.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And Carlos was probably what, over six foot?
Speaker:And now?
Speaker:And I'm six.
Speaker:I'm, well, I used to be six foot, um, old age, but, um, yeah.
Speaker:So anyway, well welcome to the podcast.
Speaker:So we're, um, this week.
Speaker:There, there was something that came up in a couple of episodes
Speaker:ago, which I don't think we went in depth enough, and so I thought
Speaker:we'd do an episode just about that.
Speaker:So let me set the stage a little bit.
Speaker:We talked in a previous episode about Crypto Locker and how that, that enabled
Speaker:that technology and things like it, right?
Speaker:So we started with Crypto Locker and then there's a number of other, uh,
Speaker:bad guys that looked at that and went.
Speaker:Went based on that model of asymmetric encryption and strong encryption.
Speaker:Um, the problem really with that is that, you know, if you, if you're a
Speaker:threat actor, this is complicated stuff.
Speaker:Um, and so I, I think a lot of people.
Speaker:They saw the money that people were starting to make with ransomware and they
Speaker:wanted to get, they wanted to be a part of it, but they didn't know how to do that.
Speaker:Does that seem like a good way to set the stage, Mike?
Speaker:It is, and there's a risk component there too.
Speaker:They didn't, they didn't want to take on all the risk.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Can you speak about that a little bit?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:And, and that's kind of when, when cyber crime became somewhat democratized.
Speaker:You know, back in the day it was, you know, one person wrote the, wrote the
Speaker:malware, uh, did the vulnerability assessments to find the way in, or
Speaker:wrote the email or delivered the device, you know, whatever it is.
Speaker:They were, they were involved from the development, the
Speaker:delivery, and the execution.
Speaker:And whether there that was, uh, you know, the execution of that was.
Speaker:Contained to the, to the victim, you know, like a denial of
Speaker:service or an outage or something.
Speaker:Or it was more ransom or, or extortion related, where they're getting paid.
Speaker:you, back in the day, that was all one person or a group
Speaker:of people doing all of that.
Speaker:and so through deregulation, I mean, uh, democratization of, of
Speaker:cyber, uh, you, you now have these.
Speaker:Threat actors that specialize.
Speaker:So you've got the guys that, that just write the code.
Speaker:You've got the people that just, you know, uh, uh, trade in, in access.
Speaker:You've got the people that are really good at, um, ex exploiting
Speaker:vulnerabilities and gaining access.
Speaker:You have the people that broker in the data.
Speaker:Uh, have the people that, uh, that.
Speaker:Develop and manage the, the botnets that, that these bad guys use to, to,
Speaker:uh, as the, the launchpad and the command and control for their, their attacks.
Speaker:Uh, so yeah, all those are different businesses now.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so getting into like, if, if you just woke up today and said, I'm gonna
Speaker:start doing ransomware, then you've gotta become an expert in all that stuff,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Do they also have like HR and all the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, the bigger ones do.
Speaker:Uh, so the more people you have, especially the, the different.
Speaker:Uh, the different skill sets and now you've gotta have a project manager.
Speaker:Uh, and then you've gotta have HR for dealing with, 'cause the project
Speaker:manager is gonna be like that person.
Speaker:I can't deal with that person.
Speaker:I need someone that knows how to deal with people.
Speaker:And so you've got hr, uh, you've got payroll, uh, you've got
Speaker:someone to manage your finances and maybe even your investments.
Speaker:You've got security, uh, bodyguards and physical security and even, even your
Speaker:own cyber team to, to, to do the cyber for you, you know, for your organization.
Speaker:'cause other bad guys are gonna attack you and.
Speaker:enforcement's looking for you.
Speaker:And so now you've got
Speaker:mind
Speaker:media people and, and PR campaigns and agents and it's, uh, it, it can be pro.
Speaker:So now you need, you know, there's not a Yellow Pages for who, who can I call
Speaker:to help me get into this business?
Speaker:Um, so you've got a, you've gotta start networking and, and, you know, getting
Speaker:your street cred, your legitimacy, and then you've gotta, you've gotta
Speaker:identify ways to get your foot in the door or somebody that can help you.
Speaker:Uh, develop that, that business that you're hoping to get into.
Speaker:So then if we're talking, um.
Speaker:So, all right, so first off, let's just talk about when, when we say ransomware as
Speaker:a service, I think it's a little different when, when we talked about it a couple
Speaker:episodes ago, it's a little different than I think I originally had envisioned it.
Speaker:Um, do you want to describe what, what we mean when we say ransomware as a service?
Speaker:There's different flavors of it.
Speaker:There's, uh, it's, it's essentially a, you're, you're, you're buying
Speaker:into a a point in time franchise.
Speaker:You know, it's a campaign.
Speaker:And so for, uh, a set amount, let's call it $30,000, you give
Speaker:to a ransomware, uh, as a service organization, you give them $30,000.
Speaker:Uh, or the equivalent in Bitcoin or some other crypto, you're
Speaker:buying a package of service.
Speaker:So that is, you know, a million email addresses that, that have been validated.
Speaker:Uh, good, good ransomware that's been tested.
Speaker:You know, it's gonna get past, you know, x percentage of anti-malware
Speaker:antivirus software out there.
Speaker:You set or they set the ransom.
Speaker:So you know, if you wanna be really aggressive, it can be a higher ransom.
Speaker:Or if you want to play the, the numbers, uh, you know,
Speaker:statistically and get more, you know.
Speaker:more success than maybe you, you go with a lower ransom, but they, they, you, you
Speaker:negotiate all this, it's pre-configured.
Speaker:Uh, and then they, they conduct the attack for you.
Speaker:Uh, and either they can set up a bit, uh, a Bitcoin wallet or wallet or you
Speaker:do, uh, and then that's, that's it.
Speaker:You, you tell 'em, you pay them the money.
Speaker:You tell 'em what you want and how you want it, and, and then you just sit back
Speaker:and watch your wallet, collect money or not, depending on how successful it is.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:That's,
Speaker:So,
Speaker:as a service.
Speaker:so.
Speaker:That sounds pretty hands off, right?
Speaker:For the, for the attacker.
Speaker:I guess one question that I have is, so I'm the, I'm the threat actor that, that's
Speaker:providing this Raz service and, and this person I'm gonna, I'm gonna attack this
Speaker:like, new group of people on behalf of this person who's paid me $30,000 plus.
Speaker:I'm assuming I'm getting a cut of the, of the ransom.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Why if I, if I had the ability to attack this, this list of email addresses, why
Speaker:wouldn't I just do that without this person and just take all, all the ransom?
Speaker:Because you're getting paid upfront, so any, any
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:campaign has an unknown success rate.
Speaker:So I could send, I could send ransomware to a million emails and not get a thing,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:but if you pay me $30,000.
Speaker:I've already built, I've already pre-built this, right?
Speaker:It's
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:you know, software, you build software and you sell it a million times.
Speaker:Your ROI is huge.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:So these guys just have a cookie cutter approach to ransomware.
Speaker:It's already, they've already put the time in to build it.
Speaker:They just copy and paste, and
Speaker:Do.
Speaker:a minimum, they're making $30,000.
Speaker:Do.
Speaker:If I kind of think in my head, and maybe this isn't the right analogy,
Speaker:but if I think about Amazon.
Speaker:Amazon needed to figure out how to scale their infrastructure as a
Speaker:business, and so they built out a bunch of infrastructure and managed it at
Speaker:scale, and then they were like, Hey, other companies need this as well.
Speaker:Let's spin.
Speaker:Let's create AWS, and we can offer those same services to those customers
Speaker:so they don't need to know all the intricacies and they can do the
Speaker:exact same things that we Amazon as a bookstore, as a business do today.
Speaker:that kind of the right way to think about this, Mike?
Speaker:similar.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:Yeah, I, I think, I think
Speaker:and.
Speaker:what really helps me is that, go ahead.
Speaker:Except the bad guys don't maintain the infrastructure.
Speaker:It goes away.
Speaker:They, they create it on demand and it goes away when it's done.
Speaker:So they're renting it from botnet
Speaker:Oh, that's, yeah.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:So they're, they're renting.
Speaker:They, what they have is the software and, and the, the process, the framework.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and then they're renting the, the infrastructure from botnets, because
Speaker:that was gonna be my next question is, well, where do they get the hardware on
Speaker:which they're gonna run all this malware?
Speaker:And the answer is a botnet.
Speaker:You want to, again, we talked about it in the last episode.
Speaker:Just give a quick de, uh, description of what a bot botnet is.
Speaker:So botnet is compromised, uh, computers, endpoints and infrastructure.
Speaker:Uh, that the end user's not aware of,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:um, you know, if you're, if if in the middle of the night your computer just
Speaker:starts doing weird stuff, blinky lights and the fan comes on and your utilization
Speaker:shoots up, then you've probably, you're probably part of a botnet, uh, unless
Speaker:you're getting like a Windows update.
Speaker:But, uh, you know, there are symptoms of.
Speaker:Uh, but yeah, a botnet is, uh, unknowingly compromised infrastructure that is
Speaker:managed by a, a botnet, uh, group.
Speaker:That then rents that, rents, rents those resources out based on, on
Speaker:your, your request for demand.
Speaker:So, you know, there are, there are botnets out there of well over, you know, millions
Speaker:of, of endpoints and infrastructure, uh, that you can, you can rent all of
Speaker:it and do a, you know, a pointed denial of service attack on, on somebody.
Speaker:And so now you've got a million computers, uh, attacking a, a
Speaker:single target, you can just say.
Speaker:Uh, I need, I need a sub.
Speaker:I need a hundred computers with 20 core processors and this much memory and this
Speaker:much, um, you know, maybe they're all Windows machines or whatever, uh, to do.
Speaker:You don't even have to tell 'em what you're using it for.
Speaker:You can just give 'em the specs and they'll carve off part of their botnet,
Speaker:uh, and rent it to you by the hour, by the day, by the week, by the month.
Speaker:So Mike, just say kind of one thing you had said previously is, okay,
Speaker:the ransomware as a service people, right, they're able to be paid
Speaker:upfront, right from their customers, and so they're guaranteed something
Speaker:versus taking a chance with whether or not they would get a payout
Speaker:from doing the attacks themselves.
Speaker:If I go back to the Amazon analogy I brought up earlier,
Speaker:one thing with that analogy is.
Speaker:Amazon.
Speaker:The business leverages AWS to build the infrastructure, to
Speaker:build their capabilities, and so they're also a consumer of that
Speaker:common infrastructure, right?
Speaker:The same thing that customers use AWS for in the case of ransomware as a service.
Speaker:Those actors, are they also launching attacks sometimes on their own?
Speaker:addition to sell selling out their infrastructure, or is it just their
Speaker:entire business is now focused on just finding other threat actors to sell to?
Speaker:usually ransomware as as a service actors, that's, that's a side business.
Speaker:So they're doing ransomware full-time as their their core business, and
Speaker:then they've got this little side hustle to make some extra money.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:By the way, to go back to the Amazon, um, analogy, I, I've never like verified
Speaker:this, but what I was told was that.
Speaker:Uh, AWS was born out of the fact that the demand for actual Amazon computers, for
Speaker:amazon.com changes throughout the year.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Um, that, that basically during Christmas, they had, um, obviously a huge demand.
Speaker:Spike.
Speaker:and then after Christmas, that demand, uh.
Speaker:Tanks.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And the idea, the original idea for AWS was to just sell the
Speaker:unused hardware that they weren't using while they weren't using it.
Speaker:And then all of a sudden they were like, Hey, I think we're onto something here.
Speaker:So it sounds like it the same thing here, where basically they, they're
Speaker:selling the, well in this case, again, Mike, I'm really glad that
Speaker:you brought that up, that they're not providing the infrastructure per se.
Speaker:They're providing the processes to software, uh, the lists, uh,
Speaker:but they actually still rent the infrastructure, the physical
Speaker:hardware from, from other people.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And one, sorry not to keep poking on this, so for, so.
Speaker:poke, poke.
Speaker:So as, as far as you're aware though, like are there certain
Speaker:things that the ransomware as a service people keep to themselves?
Speaker:Like, Hey, this thing is very secret or special, and I'm not gonna sell it out to
Speaker:other folks who are buying the ransomware as a service offering, and I'm just gonna
Speaker:keep it because it's my secret sauce.
Speaker:It's the thing that differentiates me as I'm doing my own attacks versus
Speaker:all the other people doing attacks.
Speaker:Good question.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Um, maybe, maybe some of their tactics, uh, but at the same time.
Speaker:Yeah, there's, there's no honor among thieves.
Speaker:So you could, you could give them $30,000 and a week later they could just say,
Speaker:sorry, it wasn't successful, and they could have just done nothing and taken
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Uh, but, but at the same time, they're getting paid to, to play.
Speaker:Uh, and so they're probably gonna do the campaign and, and see what they can make
Speaker:out of it and keep their percentage.
Speaker:Uh, but to my knowledge, I don't think that's any different than how
Speaker:they would attack somebody directly.
Speaker:Yeah, the, this is actually a really good point because I, this came out
Speaker:in our previous discussion and I think I'm finally getting, like this is all
Speaker:finally settling in and that is that they're different than a SaaS provider
Speaker:where if I go and I say, I want.
Speaker:A hundred Microsoft 365.
Speaker:Uh, licenses, right?
Speaker:I'm given a portal.
Speaker:I'm given a, an admin login, and I log in, and then I administer 365.
Speaker:I'm still not administering the hardware and the, and the infrastructure
Speaker:behind it, but I am administering.
Speaker:The, my portion of that world, but it sounds like that just doesn't happen here.
Speaker:I don't even get a portal.
Speaker:I'm just, I, I, like you said, I just sit back and I watch my wallet grow.
Speaker:Does that sound right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:That's, that's pretty common.
Speaker:Well, I mean, to, to Prasanna's point, uh, well, and even a point I made
Speaker:earlier about risk mitigation, uh, they want to keep an arm's length.
Speaker:They don't want you to have access to anything.
Speaker:They don't want to tie you as the, uh, the perpetrator who's probably
Speaker:gonna get caught, to them at all.
Speaker:So they don't want.
Speaker:They don't want you to have a, a link or a login or evidence of a webpage
Speaker:or a cached view of a dashboard.
Speaker:They don't want any of that.
Speaker:You're gonna communicate with them through a chat in a, in a, in a TOR network, which
Speaker:stands for The Onion Router, on the dark net, and you're gonna negotiate and pay
Speaker:everything that way and set everything up.
Speaker:And that's pretty much it.
Speaker:may, there may be some back and forth once or twice, uh, through a chat.
Speaker:Um, but, or a forum.
Speaker:But yeah, there's, there's no access.
Speaker:Viewing artifacts, dashboard results, anything.
Speaker:It's you pay them and you hope they keep their end of the bargain and
Speaker:something shows up in your wallet.
Speaker:Parsing what Mike said.
Speaker:So why, like, I'm just trying to understand like how did ransomware
Speaker:as a service really come about?
Speaker:Because it seems like.
Speaker:These operators are taking some risk, right?
Speaker:Because there is that communication with these third parties or other people who
Speaker:want to do attacks who will probably be caught, like you mentioned, right?
Speaker:And they are taking all the risk.
Speaker:But why would the ransomware as a service like I get, they get paid
Speaker:upfront, but it just seems like so much risk to them be offering this.
Speaker:For potentially not a huge payout.
Speaker:Well, it's, it's, it's like, uh.
Speaker:It's like running a million dollar company, but you
Speaker:still buy a lottery ticket,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:So you're still, you know, it would be nice to win the lottery even though
Speaker:I've got this profitable company.
Speaker:That's what they're doing.
Speaker:So ransomware actors are making a lot of money, but they're
Speaker:still buying lottery tickets.
Speaker:In this case, the lottery ticket is somebody paying them to run a campaign.
Speaker:Maybe it's a custom campaign.
Speaker:Maybe it's one they didn't intend to run.
Speaker:Maybe it was the next one they were gonna run, but they still got an
Speaker:extra, however much money it is.
Speaker:We, we've been saying 30,000, it could be 10,000.
Speaker:It could be a hundred thousand, and it could change based on the,
Speaker:the criteria from the buyer, right.
Speaker:The entrepreneur.
Speaker:Uh, so it, it's like playing the lottery in addition to your day job.
Speaker:I would not doubt.
Speaker:For a minute.
Speaker:There's no evidence of this, but I would not doubt for a minute that if you bought
Speaker:into this ransomware as a service and the bad guys have your, uh, your, you know,
Speaker:your tour, uh, identity so that they can communicate with you, I have no doubt
Speaker:that they're posting that over, you know, all over the evidence so that if they
Speaker:do get caught, you're the patsy, right?
Speaker:So.
Speaker:That doesn't sound good.
Speaker:And that's how they
Speaker:That's not very nice.
Speaker:case.
Speaker:So you're paying them and they're using you as a scapegoat,
Speaker:uh, if things go south.
Speaker:Although, I mean, there's, there's argument there too, because if I'm a
Speaker:threat actor, uh, if I'm a ransomware actor, I'm using my ransomware.
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:even though someone's paying me to do the attack, it's still my ransomware.
Speaker:So when law enforcement comes knocking, even though they hit them, they're
Speaker:gonna go, but I paid for the service.
Speaker:And
Speaker:right.
Speaker:so it's still, it's still tied to me as the, as the developer and, and,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:that's using that ransomware.
Speaker:But guys got their, their patsy, so.
Speaker:Now, earlier you talked about that there were all these different disciplines
Speaker:within that ransomware world, right?
Speaker:So you've got the, the initial access brokers, you've got those
Speaker:that collect email addresses.
Speaker:You've got those that you know that are good at lateral movement, um,
Speaker:and all these different aspects.
Speaker:Is this where the affiliate model comes into play?
Speaker:Uh, for sure.
Speaker:And so a affiliates are, are generally, uh, threat actors that have been, um.
Speaker:Validated.
Speaker:You know, there's some, they, they've, they've got street cred.
Speaker:They've, they've looked into you, you're not law enforcement.
Speaker:They, they don't think you are.
Speaker:uh, there's also a business model in that.
Speaker:for example, if I'm a ransomware, uh, threat actor, and I need targets, I need,
Speaker:I need those valid, you know, uh, good email addresses or credentials to use in
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:And I know you're a, uh, you're initial, you, you're an access broker or you're,
Speaker:you're somebody that can get those, right?
Speaker:Maybe you're, maybe you're a data broker.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:call you and say, Hey, can we build a relationship?
Speaker:So now we're an affiliate affiliates do a couple things.
Speaker:One, uh.
Speaker:I don't have to pay you upfront in some cases.
Speaker:So for a million emails, that might be like $5,000 or, or six or seven.
Speaker:Depends.
Speaker:so instead of paying you upfront for that as an affiliate, especially if
Speaker:you can't show me and it's difficult to do, out of a million records,
Speaker:how many of these did you validate?
Speaker:You're just gonna go, well, you know, over half are valid.
Speaker:I'm gonna go, all right, well, why don't I just make you an affiliate?
Speaker:And as an affiliate, you get paid.
Speaker:I'll pay you some money for the, for the data, but then I'm also
Speaker:gonna pay you a percentage of what we make off of this attack.
Speaker:So as an affiliate, you know, there's, there's different, uh, income models.
Speaker:I.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:the benefit to the affiliate for this, though?
Speaker:Uh, now, now we're, we're, we're, we're trusted partners and you're gonna,
Speaker:you're gonna keep coming back to me for more, for more access and we've
Speaker:built this business model now so that you're not at a bunch of money upfront.
Speaker:And then I can appreciate maybe a little bit more than, than retail price or, or
Speaker:going price for the data because we've got this success model built on the backend.
Speaker:Well, and I think that it, it, it's basically, it's sort of a mini version
Speaker:of the RAs model, uh, you know, on the back end that basically the, the
Speaker:reason is that you got this one person or company or whatever, and they're.
Speaker:Really good at getting new valid email addresses.
Speaker:And that's all they're really good at.
Speaker:They don't know how to break into something.
Speaker:They don't know how to send emails.
Speaker:They just know how to find emails.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So they're just really good.
Speaker:They're like, we do this one thing and so we'll give you, you know, go do
Speaker:what These emails, whatever you want.
Speaker:Uh, we just want to, we just want to cut.
Speaker:Uh.
Speaker:another example of an affiliate program in the criminal enterprise.
Speaker:Um, you know, let's take a dating site.
Speaker:Uh, most females get free access to the dating site.
Speaker:so as a female, we can set up bots or, or guys registering
Speaker:as females to try and interact
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:other guys that are paying to be a part of this.
Speaker:Uh, and, and the sole objective is to get their personal email address.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:hey, you know, wink, wink, nudge, uh.
Speaker:I like you, let's talk, and over a period of time, there's finally,
Speaker:I'd like to send you some more pictures that I can't post on this,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:platform, you know, what's a good email address?
Speaker:And then you never hear from me again because I just took that
Speaker:email address and sold it, to an affiliate that does nothing but spam.
Speaker:So the affiliate bought emails from me and then.
Speaker:That affiliate is tied to a pornography site, and for every, every visit to
Speaker:that pornography site, from a, a known, you know, cataloged email address,
Speaker:the affiliate gets $25, and that was happening a million times a day.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:That's a lot of porn.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:I mean, you don't even have to.
Speaker:Create an account just clicking the
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Just, oh, just click in the link and they get paid.
Speaker:that you're the
Speaker:They get paid.
Speaker:and this is the affiliate that sent you, gets them the money.
Speaker:attribution.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Fascinating.
Speaker:So you talked about.
Speaker:This offering ransomware as service.
Speaker:we look at the current environment, and I know things are constantly evolving, how
Speaker:many organizations are there out there that are offering ransomware as service?
Speaker:That changes every day.
Speaker:Um, you know, the big ones, there's probably six or so.
Speaker:Um, I mean, if you.
Speaker:of those, oh, go ahead.
Speaker:I was gonna say, if you Google that now or ask gr or Gemini, uh,
Speaker:you'll, you'll probably get some that, that started yesterday.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, so, so of these six though, how many entrepreneurs in your terminology are
Speaker:there, out there using like these six?
Speaker:Is it like of people are using this infrastructure, or is it like millions?
Speaker:Well, and, and I, I, I alluded to this earlier, never came back to it,
Speaker:but there's layers of, uh, of, um, consumers of ransomware as a service.
Speaker:So there's the entrepreneur, you know, Bob in Florida just wants,
Speaker:you know, some mailbox money and he has an extra, you know, couple
Speaker:thousand dollars to throw at this.
Speaker:so that's the.
Speaker:We would call those new noobs or script kitties.
Speaker:Like they don't know what they're doing, they just, they know how to push
Speaker:a button or somebody to do something.
Speaker:Uh, so that's kind of bottom level, mid tiers, more technical people that probably
Speaker:can put up some safeguards to protect their anonymity and their smart about how
Speaker:to, how to manage their cryptocurrency and use it to buy things and pay for things.
Speaker:Um, then there's the, the other threat actors.
Speaker:Uh, and so maybe, um, maybe my objective isn't ransomware money.
Speaker:It, it isn't the, the, the, the crippling of a company.
Speaker:It's, I want to extort, I want to extract their data, I want their data,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:or, uh, I want this ransomware event to be a distraction some other type of attack.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So there's, there's the other threat actor, and then there's
Speaker:the nation state actors.
Speaker:Uh, so, Yeah.
Speaker:Organized government actors, uh, employing these, uh, these ransomware
Speaker:as a service guys to, to do, to do their thing for, for whatever they're,
Speaker:that'll support their, their bigger plan.
Speaker:Yeah, you did mention in the previous episode that I could, if I, if I wanted
Speaker:to attack a given company or a given, you know, that I could literally, I,
Speaker:I'm guessing that's probably extra a targeted attack, uh, at a company.
Speaker:Uh, I could, I can pay a ransomware as a service provider to do that.
Speaker:Like you said, if I wanna steal the data or if I just, I just want to cripple them.
Speaker:Uh, or if I just.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I, I'm gonna steal money from somebody I wanna steal from this company because
Speaker:I might, because it might do them harm.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Fascinating.
Speaker:Um, you know, when you, when you talked about the, um, uh,
Speaker:using it as subterfuge, right?
Speaker:Uh, I, I, I was thinking about.
Speaker:If I remember the what?
Speaker:No, no, no.
Speaker:I was thinking about the, the, the, the, the Conti group attack of Costa
Speaker:Costa Rica and where it, it appears, if I have the details correctly, it
Speaker:appears that this giant attack, that the whole thing was subterfuge to, um.
Speaker:To allow them to sort of fade off into the wilderness.
Speaker:'cause they were, at the time, they were very heavily, uh, there was
Speaker:a lot of, uh, heat on them, right?
Speaker:There was a lot of, um, you know, government agencies that were after them.
Speaker:And so this was a way for them to, to basically fed off.
Speaker:So everybody was busy trying to figure out how to fight this giant, uh, attack.
Speaker:Meanwhile, the only purpose of the attack was to allow the Conti
Speaker:group to sort of fade off into the woodwork and, and all the, the bad
Speaker:guys go working for somebody else.
Speaker:But, um, it's, these aren't nice people, Mike.
Speaker:They're, they're not, uh.
Speaker:They're not very respected.
Speaker:Uh, you know, they don't, they don't, uh, they're not empathetic or sympathetic.
Speaker:Uh, they're not, you know, they're not hardened, malicious,
Speaker:like killer bad people.
Speaker:They're just, uh, they hide behind the computer and, and they don't,
Speaker:they don't know their victims in a lot of cases, so they don't
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:feel bad.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:I think that's on purpose too.
Speaker:Not knowing the victim, I.
Speaker:it's, it, it goes to the, the mentality of, of a lot of cyber criminals.
Speaker:They, they're very, uh, in a lot of cases, they're introverted.
Speaker:They're usually on the, the, uh, autism spectrum somewhere,
Speaker:uh, you know, socially awkward.
Speaker:not all of them.
Speaker:I mean, there's, there's some, I mean, there was even a Rolling Stone
Speaker:article back in the day of, of, uh, a hacker called the Soup Nazi.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:He was, he was extravagant.
Speaker:He would go to, to parties and flaunt his wealth and his cars.
Speaker:And that was, that's, uh, that's, that's, that's the exception.
Speaker:There's a few like that, but for the most part, very, very quiet,
Speaker:introverted, uh, socially awkward people.
Speaker:So the stereotypical computer person that everybody thinks about.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, it's been fun.
Speaker:I, I, I like this idea or I, I, I'm glad I, I think I have a better understanding
Speaker:now of this concept of, of ransomware as a service that it literally is like, I just
Speaker:sort of, I give you money, you go attack people on my behalf, and I get money.
Speaker:I don't do anything other than that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Uh, other than maybe I, I might target you.
Speaker:I might ask you to target a specific group of people, but I'm not, it's not
Speaker:like, I guess prior to, you know, you discussing it, I had this idea that you
Speaker:would provide for me a platform that I would then use to attack people, but
Speaker:it sounds like it's not that at all.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Maybe not today.
Speaker:Maybe not fair.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:very, all you know, don't, don't look behind the curtain type.
Speaker:Don't, you know, don't, don't mind the, the man behind the curtain.
Speaker:Just, uh, just sit back and, and wait for the money to roll in.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:off.
Speaker:Nice Wizard of Oz, reference there.
Speaker:All right, well thanks.
Speaker:Thanks Mike for another great episode.
Speaker:Thank you guys.
Speaker:Thanks, Prasanna.
Speaker:You're welcome.
Speaker:I.
Speaker:That is a wrap.