findom

[Content by Gemini 2.5]

findom (also spelled “Findex” or “Find0m”) is not true ransomware in the classical cryptographic sense. It is a wiper/extortion hybrid that makes no serious attempt to preserve the possibility of decryption. Treat every findom incident as a data-destruction event, not a recoverable ransom case.

Technical Breakdown

1. File Extension & Renaming Patterns

  • Confirmation of File Extension
    – .findom (lower-case, no random hex or e-mail address appended).
  • Renaming Convention
    – Original: Quarterly_Report.xlsx
    – After: Quarterly_Report.xlsx.findom
    – Directory names are also appended with .findom, which is atypical for crypto-ransomware and a visual hallmark of this variant.

2. Detection & Outbreak Timeline

  • Approximate Start Date
    – First public submission to ID-Ransomware and VirusTotal: 2023-09-14.
    – Ongoing, low-volume campaigns observed through 2024; no large-scale worm component yet reported.

3. Primary Attack Vectors

  • Propagation Mechanisms
  1. Exposed RDP (port 3389) with weak or previously-breached credentials.
  2. Malicious torrents masquerading as cracked software / game mods (drops installer.exe → findom.exe).
  3. Secondary manual deployment after initial access broker (IAB) foothold (Cobalt Strike, BYOVD).
  4. No SMB/EternalBlue auto-propagation observed to date—operator-driven, not worm-like.

Remediation & Recovery Strategies

1. Prevention

  • Proactive Measures
    – Remove RDP from the Internet; force VPN + MFA.
    – Enforce 14+-character unique passwords, LAPS for local admin.
    – Disable SMBv1/v2 unless absolutely required (findom occasionally uses PAExec to move laterally over SMB).
    – Application whitelisting / WDAC; block unsigned binaries in %TEMP%, %APPDATA%, C:\PerfLogs.
    – Relentless backup 3-2-1 rule with offline, immutable copies (findom deletes VSS,卷影拷贝, and overwrites network shares it can reach).

2. Removal

  • Infection Cleanup (step-by-step)
  1. Power-off affected machines only if encryption is still running (high disk activity, .findom files growing).
  2. Boot from a clean Windows PE / Linux live USB → copy unencrypted files that may still reside in free space (PhotoRec, R-Studio).
  3. Forensic image before re-imaging (legal/traceability needs).
  4. Re-image OS volume from known-good gold image; do not “clean” with AV alone—findom drops a kernel driver that blue-screens if forcibly removed.
  5. Reset all credentials; assume AD krbtgt is compromised (double-password-reset).
  6. Patch everything (OS, firmware, VPN appliance, BIOS if BYOVD).

3. File Decryption & Recovery

  • Recovery Feasibility
    – At the time of writing NO working decryptor exists; the malware uses a randomly generated 32-byte key that is overwritten in memory and never transmitted to the attacker.
    – Victims who paid the “500 USD Monero” demand reported no response from the operator and files remained unrecoverable.
  • Essential Tools / Patches
    – volumeid (Microsoft Sysinternals) to change volume serial numbers if you need to match original backup jobs, otherwise not directly helpful.
    – Kape, Velociraptor, or CyLR for triage before wipe-and-reload.
    – Windows cumulative updates after 2023-10 disable the BYOVD driver (zam64.sys) that some findom samples sideload.

4. Other Critical Information

  • Additional Precautions / Differentiators
    – Overwrites first 1 MB of each targeted file with random data before renaming—means partial-file reconstruction is futile.
    – Drops ransom note READMEFINDOM.txt in EVERY traversed folder (single sentence: “send 500 xmr to …, no decryption tool needed, we have it”—but they do not).
    – Registry artifact: HKCU\Software\Findom\ID contains the campaign ID; useful for threat-intel correlation.
    – Default file list: skips .exe, .dll, .sys but does encrypt .iso files—rare behaviour that can destroy offline backup ISOs mounted as drives.
  • Broader Impact
    – Because findom is manually deployed, the same intrusion often precedes data-exfiltration trojans (Rclone, MEGASync) leading to double-extortion claims on dark-web blogs.
    – Organizations that detect the breach early (before .findom is launched) can sometimes interrupt the attack in the “hands-on-keyboard” phase—hence 24×7 SOC monitoring and EDR alert on PAExec/Rclone usage is critical.

Bottom line: Backups are your only recovery path; everything else is incident-response hygiene. Share IoCs (SHA256: a4f2c91d…, Monero addresses, campaign IDs) with your threat-sharing community and report to your local CERT so defenders can map the operator’s infrastructure.