Decryptable PartyTicket Ransomware Reportedly Targeting Ukrainian Entities

March 01, 2022

| | Counter Adversary Operations

Summary

On Feb. 23, 2022, destructive attacks were conducted against Ukrainian entities. Industry reporting has claimed the Go-based ransomware dubbed PartyTicket (or HermeticRansom) was identified at several organizations affected by the attack,1 among other families including a sophisticated wiper CrowdStrike Intelligence tracks as DriveSlayer (HermeticWiper).

 

 Analysis of the PartyTicket ransomware indicates it superficially encrypts files and does not properly initialize the encryption key, making the encrypted file with the associated .encryptedJB extension recoverable.

Technical Analysis

A PartyTicket ransomware sample has a SHA256 hash of 4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d24112327c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382. It has been observed associated with the file names cdir.exe, cname.exe, connh.exe and intpub.exe.

The ransomware sample — written using Go version 1.10.1 — contains many symbols that reference the U.S. political system, including voteFor403, C:/projects/403forBiden/wHiteHousE and primaryElectionProcess.

The ransomware iterates over all drive letters and recursively enumerates the files in each drive and its subfolders, excluding file paths that contain the strings Windows and Program Files and the folder path C:\Documents and Settings (the latter folder was replaced in Windows versions later than Windows XP with C:\Users). Files with the following extensions are selected for encryption:

acl, avi, bat, bmp, cab, cfg, chm, cmd, com, contact, crt, css, dat, dip, dll, doc, docx, dot, encryptedjb , epub, exe, gif, htm, html, ico, in, iso, jpeg, jpg, mp3, msi, odt, one, ova, pdf, pgsql, png, ppt, pptx, pub, rar, rtf, sfx, sql, txt, url, vdi, vsd, wma, wmv, wtv, xls, xlsx, xml, xps, zip

For each file path that passes the previously described path and extension checks, the ransomware copies an instance of itself to the same directory it was executed from and executes via the command line, passing the file path as an argument. The parent ransomware process names its clones with a random UUID generated by a public library2 that uses the current timestamp and MAC addresses of the infected host’s network adapters. The malware developer attempted to use Go’s WaitGroup types to implement concurrency; however, due to a likely coding error, the ransomware creates a very large number of threads (one per enumerated file path) and copies its own binary into the current directory as many times as there are selected files. After all encryption threads have ended, the original binary deletes itself via the command line.

When the sample receives a file path as an argument, it encrypts the file using AES in Galois/Counter Mode (GCM). The AES key is generated using the Go rand package’s Intn function to select offsets in the character array 1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, generating a 32-byte key. Due to another likely coding error, the seed for the Intn function is updated after the key is generated, meaning the same AES key is generated each time the binary and its clones are run. All of the files encrypted on a host are encrypted with the same key, and knowledge of the corresponding PartyTicket sample’s key enables their decryption. A script using this flaw to recover the encrypted files is available on the CrowdStrike Git Repository.

For each file, the AES encryption key is itself encrypted with RSA-OAEP, using a public RSA key that has the following parameters:

Modulus (N): 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
Exponent (E): 0x10001

Before encryption, the ransomware renames the file using the format <original file name>.com>.encryptedJB (“JB” very likely stands for the initials of the United States president Joseph Biden, given the other political content in the binary). The ransomware then overwrites the content with the encrypted data. PartyTicket will only encrypt the first 9437184 bytes (9.44 MB) of a file. If the file passed as an argument is larger than this limit, any data above it is left unencrypted. After the file contents are encrypted, PartyTicket appends the RSA-encrypted AES key at the end of the file.

The ransomware also writes an HTML ransom note on the user’s desktop directory with the name read_me.html before the file encryption starts (Figure 1). Unless they are intentional mistakes, grammar constructs within the note suggest it was likely not written or proofread by a fluent English speaker.

Figure 1. Ransom note

Assessment

CrowdStrike Intelligence does not attribute the PartyTicket activity to a named adversary at the time of writing.

 

The ransomware contains implementation errors, making its encryption breakable and slow. This flaw suggests that the malware author was either inexperienced writing in Go or invested limited efforts in testing the malware, possibly because the available development time was limited. In particular, PartyTicket is not as advanced as DriveSlayer, which implements low-level NTFS parsing logic. The relative immaturity and political messaging of the ransomware, the deployment timing and the targeting of Ukrainian entities are consistent with its use as an additional payload alongside DriveSlayer activity, rather than as a legitimate ransomware extortion attempt.

YARA Signatures

The following YARA rule can be used to detect PartyTicket:

rule CrowdStrike_PartyTicket_01 : ransomware golang 
{
    meta:
        copyright = "(c) 2022 CrowdStrike Inc."
        description = "Detects Golang-based crypter"
        version = "202202250130"
        last_modified = "2022-02-25"
    strings:
        $ = ".encryptedJB" ascii
        $start = { ff 20 47 6f 20 62 75 69 6c 64 20 49 44 3a 20 22 }
        $end = { 0a 20 ff }
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and
        for 1 of ($end) : ( @start < @ and @start + 1024 > @) and
        all of them
}

rule CrowdStrike_PartyTicket_02 : PartyTicket golang 
{
    meta:
        copyright = "(c) 2022 CrowdStrike Inc."
        description = "Detects Golang-based PartyTicket ransomware"
        version = "202202250130"
        last_modified = "2022-02-25"
      strings:
        $s1 = "voteFor403"
        $s2 = "highWay60"
        $s3 = "randomiseDuration"
        $s4 = "subscribeNewPartyMember"
        $s5 = "primaryElectionProces"
        $s6 = "baggageGatherings"
        $s7 = "getBoo"
        $s8 = "selfElect"
        $s9 = "wHiteHousE"
        $s10 = "encryptedJB"
        $goid = { ff 20 47 6f 20 62 75 69 6c 64 20 49 44 3a 20 22 71 62 30 48 37 41 64 57 41 59 44 7a 66 4d 41 31 4a 38 30 42 2f 6e 4a 39 46 46 38 66 75 70 4a 6c 34 71 6e 45 34 57 76 41 35 2f 50 57 6b 77 45 4a 66 4b 55 72 52 62 59 4e 35 39 5f 4a 62 61 2f 32 6f 30 56 49 79 76 71 49 4e 46 62 4c 73 44 73 46 79 4c 32 22 0a 20 ff }
        $pdb = "C://projects//403forBiden//wHiteHousE"
    condition:
        (uint32(0) == 0x464c457f or (uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and uint16(uint32(0x3c)) == 0x4550)) and 4 of ($s*) or $pdb or $goid
}

Script to Decrypt PartyTicket Encrypted Files

Due to the previously discussed implementation errors in the AES key generation, it is possible to recover the AES key used for encryption by PartyTicket. The below Go script decrypts files encrypted by PartyTicket sample 4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d24112327c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382. The script takes the file to be decrypted as an argument via the “-p” flag and saves the decrypted output to “decrypted.bin” in the same directory. The script can be built as an executable or run via the Go run package; it was tested using Go version go1.16.6.

package main
 
import (
	"crypto/aes"
	"crypto/cipher"
	"encoding/hex"
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"flag"
)
 
func main() {
 
	encrypted_filepath := flag.String("p", "encrypted.bin", "Path to encrypted file")
	flag.Parse()
 
	fmt.Printf("Decrypting file : %s\n", *encrypted_filepath)
	key_bytes := <>byte("6FBBD7P95OE8UT5QRTTEBIWAR88S74DO")
	key := hex.EncodeToString(key_bytes)
	fmt.Printf("Decryption key : %s\n", key_bytes)
 
	dat, err := os.ReadFile(*encrypted_filepath)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("Unable to open file, please supply path of encrypted file with flag -p, default file path is ./encrypted.bin")
		os.Exit(3)
	}
 
	decrypted_filepath := "decrypted.bin"
	filecontents := dat
	encrypted_contents := filecontents<:len(filecontents) - 288>
	enc_size := len(encrypted_contents)
	bsize := 1048604
	cycles := enc_size / bsize
 
	if cycles == 0{ 
 
		encrypted := hex.EncodeToString(encrypted_contents)
		decrypted := decrypt(encrypted, key)
		write_output(decrypted_filepath, decrypted)
		} else {
			for i:=0; i<cycles; i++ { if i >= 9 {
					start := 9 * bsize
					end := enc_size
					data := string(encrypted_contents)
					write_output(decrypted_filepath, data)
					break
				}
				block_start := i * bsize
				block_end := (i+1) * bsize
				if block_end > enc_size{
					block_end := enc_size
					encrypted:=hex.EncodeToString(encrypted_contents)
					decrypted := decrypt(encrypted, key)
					write_output(decrypted_filepath, decrypted)
 
				}
 
				encrypted:=hex.EncodeToString(encrypted_contents)
				decrypted := decrypt(encrypted, key)
				write_output(decrypted_filepath, decrypted)
			}
		}
 
		fmt.Printf("Decrypted file written to : %s\n", decrypted_filepath)
 
	}
 
func write_output(filepath string, data string) {
		f, err := os.OpenFile(filepath, os.O_APPEND|os.O_CREATE|os.O_WRONLY, 0644)
		if err != nil {
			panic(err)
		}
		byte_data := <>byte(data)
		f.Write(byte_data)
		f.Close()
}
 
func decrypt(encryptedString string, keyString string) (decryptedString string) {
 
	key, _ := hex.DecodeString(keyString)
	enc, _ := hex.DecodeString(encryptedString)
 
	block, err := aes.NewCipher(key)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err.Error())
	}
	aesGCM, err := cipher.NewGCM(block)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err.Error())
	}
	nonceSize := aesGCM.NonceSize()
	nonce, ciphertext := enc<:nonceSize>, enc
	plaintext, err := aesGCM.Open(nil, nonce, ciphertext, nil)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err.Error())
	}
 
	return fmt.Sprintf("%s", plaintext)
}

Endnotes

  1. https<:>//symantec-enterprise-blogs.security<.>com/blogs/threat-intelligence/ukraine-wiper-malware-russia
  2. https<:>//pkg.go.dev/github<.>com/satori/go.uuid#NewV1

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