In what’s an occasion of hacking the hackers, risk hunters have managed to infiltrate the web infrastructure related to a ransomware group known as BlackLock, uncovering essential details about their modus operandi within the course of.
Resecurity mentioned it recognized a safety vulnerability within the knowledge leak website (DLS) operated by the e-crime group that made it doable to extract configuration recordsdata, credentials, in addition to the historical past of instructions executed on the server.
The flaw considerations a “sure misconfiguration within the Information Leak Website (DLS) of BlackLock Ransomware, resulting in clearnet IP addresses disclosure associated to their community infrastructure behind TOR hidden companies (internet hosting them) and extra service info,” the corporate mentioned.
It described the acquired historical past of instructions as one of many greatest operational safety (OPSEC) failures of BlackLock ransomware.
BlackLock is a rebranded model of one other ransomware group often known as Eldorado. It has since turn out to be one of the energetic extortion syndicates in 2025, closely focusing on expertise, manufacturing, development, finance, and retail sectors. As of final month, it has listed 46 victims on its website.
The impacted organizations are situated in Argentina, Aruba, Brazil, Canada, Congo, Croatia, Peru, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the USA.
The group, which introduced the launch of an underground affiliate community in mid-January 2025, has additionally been noticed actively recruiting traffers to facilitate early levels of the assaults by directing victims to malicious pages that deploy malware able to establishing preliminary entry to compromised techniques.
The vulnerability recognized by Resecurity is a neighborhood file inclusion (LFI) bug, primarily tricking the online server into leaking delicate info by performing a path traversal assault, together with the historical past of instructions executed by the operators on the leak website.
A few of notable findings are listed beneath –
- Using Rclone to exfiltrate knowledge to the MEGA cloud storage service, in some circumstances even putting in the MEGA shopper straight on sufferer techniques
- The risk actors have created no less than eight accounts on MEGA utilizing disposable electronic mail addresses created by way of YOPmail (e.g., “zubinnecrouzo-6860@yopmail.com”) to retailer the sufferer knowledge
- A reverse engineering of the ransomware has uncovered supply code and ransom notice similarities with one other ransomware pressure codenamed DragonForce, which has focused organizations in Saudi Arabia (Whereas DragonForce is written in Visible C++, BlackLock makes use of Go)
- “$$$,” one of many major operators of BlackLock, launched a short-lived ransomware venture known as Mamona on March 11, 2025
In an intriguing twist, BlackLock’s DLS was defaced by DragonForce on March 20 – possible by exploiting the identical LFI vulnerability (or one thing comparable) – with configuration recordsdata and inner chats leaked on its touchdown web page. A day prior, the DLS of Mamona ransomware was additionally defaced.
“It’s unclear if BlackLock Ransomware (as a gaggle) began cooperating with DragonForce Ransomware or silently transitioned beneath the brand new possession,” Resecurity mentioned. “The brand new masters possible took over the venture and their affiliate base due to ransomware market consolidation, understanding their earlier successors could possibly be compromised.”
“The important thing actor ‘$$$’ didn’t share any shock after incidents with BlackLock and Mamona Ransomware. It’s doable the actor was absolutely conscious that his operations could possibly be already compromised, so the silent ‘exit’ from the earlier venture could possibly be essentially the most rational possibility.”