BlackBerry Prevents: Phobos Ransomware

Phobos is an older ransomware family that targets small to medium organizations in a wide range of industries, including healthcare. Attackers usually demand much lower ransom amounts than other ransomware families, which may appear more affordable to victims and increase the likelihood of payment. Ransomware incident response company Coveware reports that the average Phobos payment amount in July 2021 was approximately $54,700.

Phobos attacks have two main infection vectors: email phishing campaigns with malicious attachments, or gaining access to the system over Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Attackers obtain RDP credentials by a variety of different methods. They can conduct brute force attacks, leverage stolen credentials purchased from darknet marketplaces, or they can identify open, poorly configured, or vulnerable connections that can be exploited. After gaining a foothold in the environment, the threat actor will attempt to move laterally via RDP.

Phobos actors are known to prefer targeting servers rather than end user computers when deploying their ransomware attack.

DEMO VIDEO: BlackBerry vs. Phobos Ransomware

BlackBerry Cyber Suite and BlackBerry Guard stop these attacks.

BlackBerry customers can feel confident that our AI-driven BlackBerry® Cyber Suite, as well as our Managed Detection & Response (MDR) solution BlackBerry® Guard, are well-equipped to mitigate the risks posed by threat actors such as those behind Phobos ransomware:

• BlackBerry® Protect provides automated malware prevention, application and script control, memory protection, and device policy enforcement.
• BlackBerry® Optics extends the threat prevention by using artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent security incidents. It provides true AI incident prevention, root cause analysis, smart threat hunting, and automated detection and response capabilities.
  • BlackBerry recommends activating the following BlackBerry Optics rules to provide additional telemetry from a Phobos ransomware attack: 
    • Win Netsh Usage MITRE T1059
    • Win Netsh Firewall Manipulation MITRE T1562
    • Win Netsh DLL Persistence MITRE T1546
    • Win Inhibit System Recovery MITRE T1490
    • Win FileExtensions LocalSystemCollection NonSYS MITRE T1005
    • Win FileExtensions LocalSystemCollection MITRE T1005
    • Win FileCreate Startup Folder MITRE T1547
    • Win BootRecoveryMeasure Deletion MITRE T1107
    • Win Boot Persist Mitre T1547
    • Shadow File Deletion (MITRE)
• The BlackBerry Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) solution prevents and detects advanced malicious threats at the device and application levels. It combines the mobile endpoint management capabilities of BlackBerry® Unified Endpoint Manager (UEM) with advanced AI-driven threat protection, to get in front of malicious cyberattacks in a Zero Trust environment.
• BlackBerry® Persona creates trust based on behavior analytics, app usage, and network and process invocation patterns. It uses adaptive risk scoring to provide continuous authentication.
• BlackBerry Guard customers are proactively protected from Phobos malware attacks. Our 24/7 MDR solution customers receive: 
  • Alerts monitored in real-time 
  • Corrective policies applied while discovering gaps in policy implementation 
  • Prioritized threat hunting 
  • The latest threat intelligence for fast-moving threats 

Prevention First

At BlackBerry, we take a prevention-first and AI-driven approach to cybersecurity. Putting prevention first neutralizes malware before the exploitation stage of the kill-chain.

By stopping malware at this stage, BlackBerry® solutions help organizations increase their resilience. It also helps reduce infrastructure complexity and streamline security management to ensure your business, people, and endpoints are secure.

BlackBerry Assistance

The BlackBerry Incident Response team can work with organizations of any size and across any vertical, to evaluate and enhance their endpoint security posture and proactively maintain the security, integrity, and resilience of their network infrastructure.

For emergency assistance, please email us at DLIR@blackberry.com, or use our handraiser form.

Learn more about Phobos ransomware in our new Threat Thursday blog, Who's Afraid of Phobos Ransomware?