Collection of IoCs available and related to attacks on ESXi infrastructures that occurred as of Friday February 3, 2023.
News
Here are some references regarding the attack:
https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/alerte/CERTFR-2023-ALE-015/
https://blog.ovhcloud.com/ransomware-targeting-vmware-esxi/
Recover your systems
Some really useful information to proceed with the recovery of compromised servers
CISA has released a recovery script for organizations that have fallen victim to ESXiArgs ransomware.
The script is usable only in the first version of the ransomware. With the second version of the ransomware, as indicated in the Bleeping Computer article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-esxiargs-ransomware-version-prevents-vmware-esxi-recovery/), in addition to the configuration files, a large part of the data is also encrypted.
Payments tracking
Script that extracts a list of some compromised instances (not all but probably those compromised by the Threat Actor himself). The script also extracts the list of Bitcoin Wallets indicated to pay the ransom, useful for some matches of any Wallets already used elsewhere:
https://gist.github.com/achillean/33fe43afc36208a595e75200cb7abe97
Compromised surface
It is possible to get a good idea of the compromised surface using these queries within Shodan and Censys:
Shodan (837 compromised hosts on February 6rd): https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=html%3A%22We+hacked+your+company+successfully%22+title%3A%22How+to+Restore+Your+Files%22
Censys (3276 compromised hosts on February 6rd): https://search.censys.io/search?resource=hosts&sort=RELEVANCE&per_page=25&virtual_hosts=EXCLUDE&q=services.http.response.body%3A+%22How+to+Restore+Your+Files%22+and+services.http.response.html_title%3A%22How+to+Restore+Your+Files%22
ZoomEye: https://www.zoomeye.org/searchResult?q=yytf6btdhrikgywd6aluwbafjgm5oj3pan2lg3czvhs34obs3brid7ad
Encryption script,
Starting from 8 February, a new attack campaign seems to have started and the ransom note made available by the attacker is slightly different from the previous one. Below is the query to identify the new ransom note:
At the link https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/782193/esxi-ransomware-help-and-support-topic-esxiargs-args-extension/page-14#entry5470686 the scripts used by the Threat Actor to encrypt the systems were shared:
Full script https://pastebin.com/y6wS2BXh
Script + encrypt binary https://we.tl/t-QMYhnF5evE