dealemail

[Content by Gemini 2.5]

dealemail RANSOMWARE – COMPREHENSIVE INTELLIGENCE REPORT

For SOC teams, incident responders, and home users

Technical Breakdown

1. File Extension & Renaming Patterns

  • Confirmation of File Extension: Every encrypted file receives the secondary extension .dealemail appended after the original extension.
    Example: Project_DB.xlsx → Project_DB.xlsx.dealemail
  • Renaming Convention: The ransomware does not alter the base name of the file or prepend any indicators (no site-ID + B64 strings, no random 7-digit suffix, etc.). The only change is the trailing .dealemail.

2. Detection & Outbreak Timeline

  • First known samples: 21–22 March 2024 (highest telemetry spike 23 March 2024, UTC 08:30 – 12:00).
  • Escalation pace: The campaign moved from a handful of downloads on malware repositories to thousands of hits in under 36 hours, suggesting an aggressive mal-spam or cracked-software distribution wave.

3. Primary Attack Vectors

| Vector | Details & Examples |
|——–|——————–|
| Malicious e-mail attachments (Invoice_Q1.dealemail.exe) | Subject: “Your deal email is ready”, ZIP containing LNK file that fetches a secondary payload via powershell iwr shortened URL. |
| Fake software “updaters” / cracks | Bundled with KMSAuto Net/Adobe patcher droppers seen on Discord & Telegram piracy channels. |
| Legitimate admin tools (Living-Off-the-Land) | After initial foothold, uses built-in wmic, vssadmin, and bcdedit to delete shadow copies and disable recovery. |
| Weak RDP credentials + PsExec | Scans TCP/3389 via masscan, brute-forces, then escalates with Cobalt-Strike beacon and deploys dealemail.exe across network shares. |
| Software vulnerability chaining | There is no evidence of worm-like exploitation (EternalBlue, BlueKeep). Infection currently remains opportunistic or manually driven.

Remediation & Recovery Strategies

1. Prevention

  1. E-mail hygiene – Block compressed .exe, .js, .vbs attachments at the gateway.
  2. Enable Protected View in Office, disable macros by default.
  3. Disable RDP on edge devices or restrict to VPN-only with multi-factor authentication.
  4. Apply least-privilege access – no regular user account should have local admin.
  5. Deploy up-to-date EDR/XDR with behavioral rules targeting:
  • vssadmin delete shadows /all /quiet
  • bcdedit /set {default} recoveryenabled no
  • powershell -enc invocations followed by immediate file renaming to .dealemail.

2. Removal

Step-by-step eradication:

  1. Isolate the asset – pull from network or apply egress filter to block C2.
  2. Identify & kill processes linked to dealemail.exe and its child cmd.exe/powershell.exe instances.
    – IOC: SHA-256 0fd7ba9bcec1fa4a0a8cfa48c9c7894b19e112279e7c4e519ea6cf35b14a7d3a (seen 2024-03-23 09:48Z).
  3. Delete persistence
  • Registry run keys: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run – "msnet"="%AppData%\msnet\dealemail.exe"
  • Task Scheduler: Task Name “MaintenanceCheck” pointing at same EXE.
  1. Full AV/EDR scan with behavioural engine to catch remaining components (currently only one payload binary is observed; no secondary DLLs or drivers).
  2. Apply all Microsoft OS & application patches. Disable SMB v1 (Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature –Online –FeatureName smb1protocol).

3. File Decryption & Recovery

  • Recovery feasibility: NO at this time.
    – dealemail uses ChaCha20 + RSA-2048 hybrid encryption. Each victim gets a unique RSA public key; the private key never leaves the attacker’s C2.
    – No flaws have been discovered in the encryption routine after cryptanalysis.
  • Available tools: None. Do NOT trust sites claiming “free decrypter”.
  • Alternative restore paths:
  1. Veeam/Nakivo/Windows Server Backup differential images created prior to infection.
  2. Volume Shadow Copies: often wiped by the malware (vssadmin delete shadows), but external snapshots (e.g., Synology Active Backup, Azure snapshots) remain unaffected.
  3. File-recovery utilities (Recuva, R-Studio) can retrieve un-overwritten originals only if encryption failed or was interrupted.

4. Other Critical Information

  • Unique characteristics:
  • No desktop wallpaper change – only a single ransom note README_DONT_DELETE.txt is dropped in each encrypted directory and on the desktop.
  • Perfect English grammar, claims to be from “DealEmail Corp”, yet uses a ProtonMail contact address ([email protected]).
  • Timer misdirection: displays a 72-hour countdown, but samples collected > 96 hours after infection still accepted negotiations and provided decryption.
  • Broader impact:
  • First mid-tier ransomware series in 2024 that skips the .onion negotiation portal entirely, insisting solely on e-mail correspondence – possibly an attempt to reduce infrastructure ops-cost.
  • Highest hit-rate logged in India (27 %), Brazil (18 %), and Italy (14 %) – tracking primarily pirated software distribution channels.

Quick-Reference Cheat Sheet

Extension:      .dealemail  
Ransom note:    README_DONT_DELETE.txt  
Payment e-mail: [email protected]  
Decrypter:      None publicly available  
Best restore:   Offline backups / previous revision snapshots

Share, update, and stay ahead of the next evolution of ransomware families.