Grixba Deep Dive: Tracking 26 Months of Play Ransomware's Custom Scanner Evolution

Posted in: Malware Analysis | Threat Intelligence | Ransomware

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Research Credit: The foundational analysis and sample-level findings in this article are based on original research by RakeshKrish published at The Raven File on June 8, 2026. This post expands on that work with additional context, defender guidance, and structured analysis for practitioners. All credit for the sandbox execution findings, MITRE profiling, and version comparison framework belongs to the original researcher.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Why Play Ransomware Matters
2. What Is Grixba?
3. The Four Samples: SHA-256 Hashes and Timeline
4. Size Analysis: The Bloat-and-Shrink Strategy
5. Version-by-Version Feature Breakdown
   • v1 → v1.5: Adding the Network Scanner
   • v1.5 → v2: The Full Modular Overhaul
   • v2 → v3: Strategic Regression for Evasion
6. What Does Grixba Actually Hunt For? (Scanner Targets)
7. MITRE ATT&CK Analysis: What the Sandbox Revealed
8. The Mutex: CPFATE_2704_v4.0.30319
9. Capability Verdict: Which Version Is Most Dangerous?
10. Weakness Analysis: Where Defenders Can Win
11. The DPRK Connection
12. Detection Strategy and Hunting Guidance
13. IOC Reference Table
14. Conclusion

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1. Introduction: Why Play Ransomware Matters

Play Ransomware is one of the most persistent and consistently active ransomware groups operating today. Since first appearing in 2022, the group has compromised more than 1,200 victims globally, with a heavy geographic focus on the United States (900+ victims), Canada, and the UK. The sectors most targeted include manufacturing, business services, and technology companies — organizations with high operational dependencies and low tolerance for downtime.

What separates Play from many ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations is their investment in custom tooling. Most ransomware affiliates rely on commodity tools — off-the-shelf RATs, leaked builders, and publicly available post-exploitation frameworks. Play built their own. And one of those custom tools — a .NET-based infostealer and network scanner called Grixba — gives us a rare window into the operational maturity and evolving tradecraft of a sophisticated ransomware actor.

This article provides a practitioner-focused deep-dive into four versions of Grixba sampled across 26 months, from September 2022 through November 2024. The goal is not just to catalog indicators — it is to understand the reasoning behind each architectural change, identify persistent detection opportunities that survive version upgrades, and give defenders the context they need to build durable hunting rules rather than fragile signature-based detections.

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2. What Is Grixba?

Grixba is a custom-built infostealer and network reconnaissance tool developed by the Play Ransomware group. It is written in .NET and was initially distributed as a single-executable binary packed using Costura — a .NET utility that embeds all assembly dependencies into a single portable EXE.

The tool's primary purpose is pre-encryption intelligence gathering. Before Play deploys its ransomware payload, Grixba is used to map everything relevant on the compromised network:

• Installed security software (AV, EDR, XDR products)
• Backup solutions and remote management tools
• Active user accounts and machine inventory
• Cached Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) sessions
• Cryptocurrency wallet data
• Messaging application data
• Browser history (in v1.5 specifically)
• User credentials

The intelligence gathered by Grixba directly informs the ransomware operators' decisions about which systems to encrypt, which security tools to disable first, and which backup systems need to be wiped before the encryption phase begins. This is not opportunistic scanning — it is structured, deliberate pre-attack reconnaissance.

Grixba was first publicly identified in 2023, with CISA and the FBI referencing it in advisory AA23-352A and Symantec classifying it as Infostealer.Grixba. The original research by RakeshKrish at The Raven File is the most comprehensive multi-version analysis of this tool published to date.

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3. The Four Samples: SHA-256 Hashes and Timeline

The analysis covers four distinct samples compiled across a 26-month window:

Version	Approx. Date	Size	SHA-256
v1 (Baseline)	September 2022	164 KB	453257c3494addafb39cb6815862403e827947a1e7737eb8168cd10522465deb
v1.5 (Network Scanner)	November 2022	175 KB	c59f3c8d61d940b56436c14bc148c1fe98862921b8f7bad97fbc96b31d71193c
v2 (Full Modular)	May 2023	727 KB	f8810179ab033a9b79cd7006c1a74fbcde6ed0451c92fbb8c7ce15b52499353a
v3 (Stripped/Staged)	November 2024	118 KB	3621468d188d4c3e2c6dfe3e9ddcfe3894701666bad918bc195aba0c44e46e94

The v1.5 label requires a note: this November 2022 sample is listed by CISA/FBI advisory AA23-352A as the "Play network scanner / Gt_net.exe" and by Symantec as Infostealer.Grixba. It sits seven weeks after v1 and predates the v2 architectural overhaul by approximately six months — consistent with an iterative build that added network scanning capability before the full modular redesign.

Together, these four samples tell a coherent story: rapid capability expansion, followed by a deliberate architectural regression. The binary grew from 164 KB to 727 KB across the first three versions, then was deliberately cut back to 118 KB — smaller than the original baseline. Each phase reflects a specific operational objective.

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4. Size Analysis: The Bloat-and-Shrink Strategy

v1 → v1.5: +11 KB (+6.7%)

A minor but meaningful bump compiled just seven weeks after the baseline. The v1.5 build expanded network scanning breadth — CISA's advisory explicitly labels this hash as the "Play network scanner," distinguishing it from the pure infostealer framing of v1. Additional host enumeration paths and a wider software detection list were added, but the monolithic architecture and Costura bundling were preserved.

v1.5 → v2: +552 KB (+315%)

The jump to 727 KB is the most dramatic in the series, driven by four concurrent changes happening simultaneously:

• XOR-encrypted modular payload (inf_g.dll / data.dat): All scanning logic was extracted into a bundled DLL, XOR-encrypted and stored as data.dat. Decoding at runtime requires an embedded base64 XOR key.
• SQLite database engine: Output migrated from flat CSV files to a structured ExportData.db database, requiring bundling a database engine.
• Forged PE version-info resources: The binary impersonates SentinelOne with fake metadata strings embedded in the PE header.
• Greatly expanded scan radar: 14+ new AV/EDR products, 15+ new RMM tools, and 5+ new backup vendors added to the detection target list.

Notably, v2 was compiled approximately three weeks after Symantec's public Grixba disclosure in April 2023. The operators were clearly watching detection research and responded with a substantially more evasive build within weeks.

v2 → v3: −609 KB (−84%)

The November 2024 sample is smaller than even the 2022 baseline at 118 KB. This is not simplification — it is intentional architectural regression driven by operational security lessons learned after 18 months of public analysis of v2.

After v2 was publicly documented by Symantec (April 2023), Field Effect MDR (January 2025), and CISA (June 2025), the v2 IoC set became widely distributed: the 727 KB size, ExportData.db, data.dat, inf_g.dll, and the SentinelOne PE metadata became well-known hunting signatures.

v3 sidesteps all of these in a single architectural move: by stripping the bundled database engine and moving the heavy scanning logic into a separately-delivered module, the dropper binary becomes dramatically smaller, carries fewer static indicators, and evades size-based and hash-based signatures tuned for v2. The scanning payload can now be staged and delivered on demand.

Critical Defender Note: YARA rules, size thresholds, and file-name detections built for the v2 pattern (727 KB, ExportData.db, inf_g.dll, SentinelOne metadata) will silently miss v3. Defenders must pivot to behavioral detections: WMI/WinRM enumeration patterns, the C:\Users\Public\Music\ drop path, and PIA VPN egress — which remain consistent across all four versions.

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5. Version-by-Version Feature Breakdown

v1 → v1.5: Adding the Network Scanner

Added: Network Scanner Mode (Explicit Host Scanning)
v1.5 expands Grixba's enumeration to include active host discovery across IP ranges, beyond just WMI enumeration. CISA labels it a "network scanner" alongside infostealer — it can now aggressively identify reachable hosts and services. This is the earliest confirmed use of host-range scanning in Grixba.

Added: Browser History Path Enumeration
CISA published Snort detection rules for this hash that trigger on a chain of nine SMB-accessed web browser history paths (GRXBA_webhist_path_1 through _9). v1.5 added browser history collection — scanning for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Internet Explorer history databases accessible over SMB.

Added: Wider Software Enumeration List
The 11 KB size increase is consistent with additional string tables covering security products not present in v1's scan list, while not yet reaching the full breadth of v2's expanded radar.

Retained: Monolithic architecture, CSV output (alive.csv, soft.csv, wm.csv, etc.), WinRAR-compressed export.zip without password protection. The modular XOR-encrypted DLL architecture and SQLite database output are not present yet.

v1.5 → v2: The Full Modular Overhaul

Added: XOR-Encrypted Modular Architecture
v2 extracts all scanning logic into inf_g.dll, XOR-encrypted and bundled as data.dat. At runtime, Grixba decodes data.dat using an embedded base64 XOR key to recover inf_g.dll, which hosts the inf_g.Core.CoreScanner class. Static analysis of the EXE alone reveals no scanning logic. It also means the operators can update the payload (inf_g.dll) independently of the dropper (GT_NET.exe).

Added: PE Masquerading as SentinelOne
The v2 binary is named GT_NET.exe with PE version-info forged to display as "SentinelOne Compatibility Wizard" version 1.1.6.0. This exploits defender trust in recognizable security tool names in Task Manager and basic triage — and the irony of impersonating one of the very products the tool is designed to detect is operationally deliberate.

Added: SQLite DB Output — ExportData.db
All reconnaissance output is consolidated into a single structured database with 18 tables: active hosts, browser history, installed software, processes, session information, network routes, cached credentials, and more. This eliminates the eight named CSV files that were prominent hunting artifacts in v1/v1.5.

Added: Obfuscated-Password Archive (data.zip)
v2 produces a password-protected data.zip. The password displayed at runtime is not the actual decryption password — it must be combined with the hard-coded GUID E8B10161-0849-4984-A6BF-3D1B267615CC- found in inf_g.dll to derive the real password. Capturing the console output alone is insufficient to open the archive.

Added: C2 via PIA VPN (84.239.41.12)
v2 communicates with a Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN exit node for anonymized exfiltration. v1 and v1.5 had no dedicated C2 infrastructure.

Added: Massively Expanded Scan List
New AV/EDR additions include CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Carbon Black, Morphisec, MVISION, WithSecure, WatchGuard, FireEye, F-Secure, Heimdal, HitmanPro, VIPRE, DeepArmor, and Dr.Web. New RMM additions include NinjaOne, Kaseya VSA, ConnectWise, BeyondTrust, GoTo Resolve, Splashtop, Atera, Zoho Assist, Action1, Pulseway, DameWare, and Radmin. IDrive, Synology C2, and Dropbox added to backup vendor coverage.

v2 → v3: Strategic Regression for Evasion

Regressed: SQLite Engine Removed
The SQLite engine was the largest single contributor to v2's 727 KB size. v3 drops it entirely. Output returns to a compressed archive, retaining the password protection mechanism from v2.

Regressed: Payload Delivery Externalized
In v2, the XOR-encrypted inf_g.dll was carried inside data.dat alongside the EXE. v3 externalizes the scanning logic entirely — the dropper is now a lean loader stub that pulls the scanning payload as a separate stage. This makes the dropped EXE far smaller and removes data.dat as a detection artifact.

Regressed: SentinelOne PE Metadata Dropped
The elaborate SentinelOne version-info block is removed or significantly simplified. The GT_NET.exe filename convention is retained as a lighter-weight naming disguise, but the PE metadata that was the most-published static signature from v2 is gone.

Regressed: Costura Dependency Bundling Reduced
v3 drops below v1's baseline (118 KB vs 164 KB), which is only achievable by removing or drastically reducing Costura bundling. Dependencies are resolved at runtime via the target environment's .NET Framework installation.

Regressed: Expanded Scan List Trimmed to Core Targets
The aggressive v2 expansion is dialed back. Core targets (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender, Veeam, TeamViewer, AnyDesk) are retained as the highest-value detections. Products added in v2 that proved rarely encountered in target environments are removed.

Retained across all versions:

• Core WMI/WinRM/Remote Registry/Remote Services enumeration
• Clr mode: EvtOpenLog/EvtClearLog log wiping (anti-forensics)
• C:\Users\Public\Music\ drop path via RDP
• Password-protected ZIP exfiltration (from v2 onward)

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6. What Does Grixba Actually Hunt For?

Grixba's scanning targets fall into three categories: security products (AV/EDR), remote management tools (RMM), and backup solutions. Understanding what it scans for tells us exactly which defensive gaps the Play operators are looking to exploit before they detonate ransomware.

Security Products Targeted (AV/EDR): Windows Defender, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne, Carbon Black, Morphisec, Symantec, Malwarebytes, Kaspersky, ESET, Bitdefender, Sophos, Trend Micro, McAfee/Trellix, MVISION, WithSecure, WatchGuard, FireEye, F-Secure, Heimdal, HitmanPro, VIPRE, DeepArmor, Dr.Web, and others.

Remote Management Tools Targeted (RMM): TeamViewer, AnyDesk, ConnectWise Control, NinjaOne, Kaseya VSA, BeyondTrust, GoTo Resolve, Splashtop, Atera, Zoho Assist, Action1, Pulseway, DameWare, Radmin, and others. These tools can be weaponized for lateral movement or hijacked for persistence.

Backup Solutions Targeted: Veeam, Acronis, Backup Exec, IDrive, Synology C2, Dropbox backups, Windows Backup, shadow copy utilities (Play also uses a separate AlphaVSS-based companion tool for VSS wiping). Knowing what backup tools are present helps operators plan targeted disruption before encryption.

The color-coded version tracking in the original research shows that v1 covered the core list in grey, v1.5 expanded it (purple additions), v2 dramatically broadened it (green additions), and v3 pruned the v2 additions back (red removals), retaining only the most consistently valuable targets.

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7. MITRE ATT&CK Analysis: What the Sandbox Revealed

The original researcher conducted direct sandbox execution of all four binaries rather than relying solely on public reports. The MITRE ATT&CK findings reflect actual runtime behavior. A notable trend: technique count decreases across versions — v1 and v1.5 each triggered 12 techniques, v2 triggered 10, and v3 triggered only 8. The tool becomes progressively quieter with each version, generating fewer detectable behaviors as the architecture is simplified.

Key Findings from Sandbox Analysis

1. Architecture flip: x86 → x64 → x86
v1 and v1.5 are 32-bit (x86) binaries. v2 upgraded to 64-bit (x64). v3 reverted back to 32-bit. This is significant: 32-bit .NET processes run under WOW64 on modern 64-bit Windows, adding a translation layer that some EDR hooks do not cover as comprehensively as native 64-bit processes. The reversion to 32-bit in v3 may be deliberate evasion engineering.

2. EDR unhooking present in all four versions — but the method changed
Every version modifies ntdll.dll memory protection to PAGE_READWRITE to unhook EDR instrumentation. However, in v1 and v1.5, this is paired with direct syscalls from unbacked memory — a more aggressive technique that calls kernel functions directly, bypassing ntdll entirely. In v2 and v3, the direct unbacked syscall technique is absent. The developers traded raw aggression for cleaner execution in later versions.

3. AMSI and WLDP loaded in v1, v1.5, v2 — completely absent in v3
v1 through v2 load amsi.dll (Antimalware Scan Interface) and wldp.dll (Windows Lockdown Policy) from unbacked callers — indicative of bypass attempts before executing the managed payload. v3 loads neither. This is the single most significant behavioral change between v2 and v3, eliminating a class of alerts that the first three versions consistently triggered.

4. Identical self-read offset in v1 and v1.5 — codebase fingerprint
Both v1 and v1.5 read from their binary images at the same offset (0x3030785c3030785c), confirming they share the same Costura bootstrapper code and identical packing. This confirms a direct code lineage between the two versions.

5. v3 added new locale/language APIs — not in any prior version
v3 resolves LCIDToLocaleName, GetUserDefaultLocaleName, GetLocaleInfoEx, GetUserPreferredUILanguages, LocaleNameToLCID, and GetConsoleCP. Combined with the persistent en-US geofencing registry check present in all four versions, this suggests v3 expanded its locale-awareness — possibly to avoid execution in non-English-language environments, or to support new targeting criteria introduced alongside the DPRK partnership context.

6. v2 uniquely added timezone and shell APIs
v2 resolves RtlGetSystemTimeAndBias, GetDynamicTimeZoneInformation, and loads shell32.dll, tzres.dll, and related APIs. None appear in v1, v1.5, or v3 — consistent with v2's expanded reconnaissance scope and its 18-table ExportData.db structure, which required timezone-aware and shell folder enumeration capabilities.

Universal Detection Rule (All Four Versions)

The original research identifies a four-behavior chain confirmed present across every version from September 2022 to November 2024:

1. Process modifies ntdll.dll to PAGE_READWRITE
2. Registers a Vectored Exception Handler (VEH)
3. Creates RWX (Read-Write-Execute) memory
4. Checks registry key: HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\CustomLocale\en-US

Any process that executes this sequence in order is exhibiting Play's Grixba execution pattern. This is the most durable detection rule in the entire Grixba analysis corpus — it survives architectural changes, size regressions, and PE metadata changes across all four versions.

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8. The Mutex: CPFATE_2704_v4.0.30319

A mutex named CPFATE_2704_v4.0.30319 was found in two of the four samples (v1 and v2). Breaking down the components:

• CPFATE: A custom operator-defined prefix. Not a Windows system mutex and not associated with any legitimate application.
• 2704: Likely a hardcoded build or version identifier, or a PID baked into the mutex name at runtime.
• v4.0.30319: The exact .NET Framework 4.0 runtime version string (Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.30319), suggesting the mutex is constructed programmatically as: "CPFATE_" + hardcoded_id + "_" + Environment.Version.ToString()

The implications for defenders and analysts are significant:

• Same author confirmed: Finding an identical custom mutex prefix across a September 2022 and May 2023 build confirms the same person or team developed both — v2 is a direct evolution, not a separate tool that was relabeled.
• Shared code lineage: The mutex creation code was carried forward verbatim from v1 to v2, confirming direct codebase inheritance.
• OpSec failure: Any EDR or hunting query looking for mutex creation events containing CPFATE will catch both v1 and v2 regardless of filename, PE metadata, or binary size changes.
• .NET 4.x dependency confirmed: v4.0.30319 locks the runtime requirement — both samples require .NET Framework 4.x on the victim machine.

The mutex has not been observed in v1.5 or v3 analysis yet, but the pattern is a valuable hunting artifact for v1 and v2 detections.

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9. Capability Verdict: Which Version Is Most Dangerous?

From an attacker's perspective, the original research concludes that v2 (727 KB, May 2023) is the strongest overall sample — it combines peak capability (ExportData.db with 18 intelligence tables, expanded scan list, encrypted modular architecture, anonymized C2) with moderate evasion. However, each version makes different trade-offs:

Version	Capability	Evasion	Operational Agility	Best For
v1	Moderate	Low	Low (monolithic)	Initial reconnaissance, simple targets
v1.5	Moderate+	Low	Low (monolithic)	Network-wide host discovery
v2	High	Moderate	Moderate	Deep pre-encryption intelligence gathering
v3	Moderate	High	High (staged)	Evading mature v2 detection stacks, varied deployment contexts

v3's reduced capability is a deliberate trade-off — the operators accepted less detailed intelligence output in exchange for dramatically improved evasion of the detection ecosystem that had built up around v2 over 18 months.

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10. Weakness Analysis: Where Defenders Can Win

Every version of Grixba has structural weaknesses that defenders can exploit. Some were fixed across versions. The weaknesses that remain unfixed across all four versions are the most important for building durable detection.

Weaknesses Fixed in Later Versions

• Plaintext export.zip (v1, v1.5): All CSV output immediately readable by incident responders. Fixed in v2 with password-protected data.zip.
• No PE metadata disguise (v1, v1.5): Binary easily identifiable as unknown with no legitimate cover story. Fixed in v2 with SentinelOne impersonation (then removed in v3).
• Console help screen revealing all modes (v1): Executing without correct arguments printed all supported modes and output file names. Obscured in v2.
• Browser history SMB paths triggering Snort rules (v1.5): Nine specific SMB access patterns to browser history databases were detectable at the network layer with published Snort rules.
• Hard-coded GUID enabling data.zip decryption (v2): The GUID E8B10161-0849-4984-A6BF-3D1B267615CC- in inf_g.dll allows defenders who recover the sample to decrypt the exfiltration archive. Not fixed in v3.
• 727 KB anomalous binary size (v2): Detectable by ML-based size/entropy heuristics. Fixed in v3.
• data.dat + inf_g.dll two-file deployment fingerprint (v2): A highly distinctive drop pattern. Fixed in v3 by externalizing the payload.

Weaknesses Persistent Across All Versions (Never Fixed)

• Drop path unchanged — C:\Users\Public\Music\ via RDP: Every single version of Grixba across 26 months has been dropped to this exact path via Remote Desktop Protocol. This is the most significant unforced operational security error in the tool's history. Any EDR or file-integrity monitoring alerting on executable writes to this directory from RDP sessions catches every version.
• WMI/WinRM enumeration generates high-volume telemetry: Grixba's primary function produces a distinctive pattern of rapid lateral WMI connections from one source host to multiple targets in a short time window — a well-known lateral movement indicator. This has never changed because it is the core capability.
• No anti-sandbox or anti-debug capability: None of the four versions check for VM artifacts, low uptime, unusual process lists, or virtual NIC vendors. Running any version in a sandbox produces a complete execution trace. This basic capability — common in commodity malware — has never been implemented.
• .NET managed IL is trivially decompilable: Building in .NET means every version decompiles to near-source code with freely available tools (dnSpy, ILSpy). No obfuscation layer has been applied to any version. v2's XOR encryption of inf_g.dll adds one step, but once decoded, it decompiles identically.

New Weaknesses Introduced in v3

• Staged delivery creates a single point of failure: If the second-stage payload is blocked or detected in transit, the dropper alone is useless. Unlike v2 which was fully self-contained, v3's operational success depends on a delivery dependency.
• GT_NET.exe filename without the SentinelOne cover story: In v2, the filename was paired with convincing PE metadata making it look legitimate. In v3, the metadata was removed but the recognizable filename remains — arguably making it more suspicious than before.

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11. The DPRK Connection

In October 2024, security researchers confirmed that North Korean state actor Jumpy Pisces (Andariel) had been operating alongside Play Ransomware as an initial access broker. The November 2024 v3 compilation coincides directly with the period of active DPRK collaboration.

The v3 architectural choices — leaner, stageable, lower fingerprint — may reflect not just evasion of public detection but also the operational requirements of a new partner. A 727 KB monolithic EXE with database engine bundled is harder to adapt to varied intrusion contexts. A lean loader stub that stages its payload on demand is far more versatile across the diverse deployment environments that a state-actor initial access broker would encounter.

The expanded locale/language APIs newly introduced in v3 also support this hypothesis: greater locale awareness could serve geofencing requirements for DPRK operational security, avoiding execution in environments that would trigger unwanted attention.

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12. Detection Strategy and Hunting Guidance

Based on the four-version analysis, here is a prioritized detection framework for defenders:

Tier 1: Highest Confidence, Version-Agnostic

• File writes to C:\Users\Public\Music\ from RDP sessions: The single most reliable indicator across all versions and 26 months. Monitor for any executable (.exe, .dll, .dat) written to this path during or immediately after an RDP session.
• 4-behavior execution chain: ntdll PAGE_READWRITE modification + VEH handler registration + RWX memory creation + HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\CustomLocale\en-US registry check in sequence.
• Rapid lateral WMI connections: One source host initiating WMI queries against multiple targets within a short time window, especially combined with WinRM and Remote Registry access patterns.

Tier 2: High Confidence, Version-Specific

• Mutex creation events containing "CPFATE": Catches v1 and v2 regardless of other changes.
• GT_NET.exe process name: Used across multiple versions with only cosmetic PE metadata changes.
• EvtOpenLog / EvtClearLog API calls + WMI activity log wipe in sequence: The Clr (log clearing) mode present in every version.
• ntdll.dll memory protection modification to PAGE_READWRITE: EDR unhooking behavior present in all four versions.

Tier 3: Version-Specific (Still Valuable for Triage)

• ExportData.db presence on disk (v2 indicator)
• data.dat + GT_NET.exe co-presence in C:\Users\Public\Music\ (v2 indicator)
• Network connection to 84.239.41.12 (v2 C2 indicator)
• Browser history SMB access across Chrome/Edge/Firefox/IE paths in sequence (v1.5 indicator)

What to Avoid Over-Indexing On

• Binary size thresholds (changed dramatically across versions)
• SentinelOne PE metadata strings (removed in v3)
• Specific CSV file names like alive.csv, soft.csv (removed in v2)
• Hash-based detections as the primary signal (each version is a new hash)

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13. IOC Reference Table

File Hashes (SHA-256)

Hash	Description
453257c3...65deb	Infostealer.Grixba baseline (v1)
c59f3c8d...904b7	Play network scanner / Gt_net.exe (v1.5, CISA AA23-352A)
f8810179...353a	Peak-capability build (v2)
36214681...6e94	Stripped/staged build (v3)
b4505ab4...b7	inf_g.dll — XOR-decoded CoreScanner module
5922b1a7...18	XOR-encrypted payload carrier (data.dat)
f71476f9...b6	Infostealer.Grixba cluster (Symantec)
f81bd2ac...f9	All VSS Copying Tool (AlphaVSS-based companion)

Network Indicators

• IP: 84.239.41(.)12 — PIA VPN exit node used as v2 C2

File System Indicators

• Drop path: C:\Users\Public\Music\ (all versions)
• Filenames: GT_NET.exe, GT_NET.exe (lean), data.dat, inf_g.dll, ExportData.db, export.zip, data.zip
• Embedded GUID: E8B10161-0849-4984-A6BF-3D1B267615CC-

Mutex

• CPFATE_2704_v4.0.30319 (observed in v1 and v2)

Tor Infrastructure (Play Ransomware)

• x6zdxw6vt3gtpv35yqloydttvfvwyrju3opkmp4xejmlfxto7ahgnpyd(.)onion
• b3pzp6qwelgeygmzn6awkduym6s4gxh6htwxuxeydrziwzlx63zergyd(.)onion
• p2qzf3rfvg4f74v2ambcnr6vniueucitbw6lyupkagsqejtuyak6qrid(.)onion
• whfsjr35whjtrmmqqeqfxscfq564htdm427mjekic63737xscuayvkad(.)onion
• mbrlkbtq5jonaqkurjwmxftytyn2ethqvbxfu4rgjbkkknndqwae6byd(.)onion
• k7kg3jqxang3wh7hnmaiokchk7qoebupfgoik6rha6mjpzwupwtj25yd(.)onion
• j75o7xvvsm4lpsjhkjvb4wl2q6ajegvabe6oswthuaubbykk4xkzgpid(.)onion

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14. Conclusion

The four-version arc of Grixba is one of the clearest documented examples of a ransomware group's feedback loop with the detection ecosystem. Play built a tool, watched it get detected, expanded it dramatically in response to the first detections, and then — after that expansion became the new detection baseline — stripped it back below the original baseline to escape again.

The April 2023 Symantec disclosure was answered in three weeks with v2. The 18 months of progressive v2 analysis from Symantec, CISA, Trend Micro, and Field Effect MDR was answered by November 2024 with v3 — a build smaller than v1, carrying none of the artifacts that made v2 detectable, and architecturally suited for the new DPRK partnership context.

For defenders, the message is straightforward: do not anchor detection to any single version's artifacts. The only constants across all four versions are the C:\Users\Public\Music\ drop path from RDP sessions and the WMI/WinRM enumeration behavior. While size, filename, PE metadata, output format, and archive structure have all changed, this behavioral pair has held steady across 26 months and four architectural generations.

Hunt the behavior. Not the binary.

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References and Further Reading

• Original Research: RakeshKrish, "Decoding Grixba — A Play Ransomware Scanner," The Raven File, June 8, 2026. https://theravenfile.com/2026/06/08/decoding-grixba-a-play-ransomware-scanner/
• CISA/FBI Advisory AA23-352A — Play Ransomware
• Symantec Threat Intelligence — Infostealer.Grixba (April 2023)
• Field Effect MDR — Grixba / Play Ransomware impersonates SentinelOne (January 2025)
• Trend Micro — Play Ransomware Analysis

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Tags: Play Ransomware, Grixba, Malware Analysis, Infostealer, .NET Malware, MITRE ATT&CK, Ransomware, Threat Intelligence, EDR Evasion, DPRK Threat Actor, Jumpy Pisces, Andariel, Incident Response, IOC, Hunting

SEO Poisoning Leads to Fake Claude Code Infostealer Attacks

Attackers are exploiting the Claude Code adoption wave. A six-stage fileless infostealer is being delivered through a poisoned search result to first-time developers who think they are following an installation guide. Here is everything you need to know.

Credit and original research: Cyderes Howler Cell

Why this campaign matters before we get to the technical details

Most malware campaigns target careless users or misconfigured systems. This one targets something different: enthusiasm.

Claude Code has opened software development to people who never thought it was accessible to them. A small business owner automating their invoicing. A teacher building a grading tool. An entrepreneur with an app idea and, for the first time, a realistic path to shipping it. These are the people this campaign is hunting. Not IT administrators ignoring security policy. First-time builders sitting down to install a tool they are genuinely excited about, following instructions that look completely legitimate.

The attacker did not need to trick a security professional. They needed to be at the top of a search result when someone motivated, trusting, and technically inexperienced went looking for a getting-started guide. SEO poisoning put them there. And unlike a corporate user, this audience typically has no proxy filtering, no endpoint detection, and no security team to call. What they have is a browser, a search engine, and instructions that look exactly like every other installation guide they have ever followed.

Cyderes Howler Cell identified and documented this campaign in full. What follows is a technical breakdown of their findings, with analysis of what makes this chain particularly dangerous and what defenders need to do about it.

The attack chain at a glance

The full delivery chain is six stages deep, entirely fileless after Stage 1, and engineered to defeat file inspection, AMSI, EDR telemetry, sandbox analysis, and static IOC matching simultaneously. Here is the sequence:

Initial access begins with an SEO-poisoned search result for "claude code install" leading to a spoofed Anthropic install page. The page looks right. The branding is convincing. The instructions feel familiar.

Execution happens through a ClickFix lure. The victim is instructed to open the Windows Run dialog using Win+R and paste a pre-staged mshta.exe command, framed as a required step to complete the installation. This is hands-on keyboard execution rather than automated drive-by delivery, which bypasses many endpoint controls that key on automated or scripted execution patterns. The victim complies because they have no baseline for what legitimate installation should or should not ask them to do.

Stage 1 sees mshta.exe retrieve an MP3/HTA polyglot payload from download.version-516[.]com, a software-update-themed lure domain designed to look like a routine update server.

Stage 2 has the HTA spawn cmd.exe, which runs an encoded PowerShell script performing three operations: an AMSI bypass, RC4 string decryption, and victim fingerprinting via an MD5 hash of the machine name and username.

Stage 3 downloads a second PowerShell script from a per-victim subdomain on oakenfjrod[.]ru, executed entirely in memory. The script is 17 MB, a size engineered deliberately to break analysis tooling.

Stage 4 delivers a reflective .NET infostealer that beacons to Russian infrastructure at 185[.]177[.]239[.]255:443 for credential exfiltration. Nothing is written to disk. No new process is spawned.

Before going deeper, one clarification that matters: Anthropic is not compromised. The legitimate Claude Code installation path is unaffected. This campaign is brand impersonation, not a supply chain attack.

Stage 1: The MP3/HTA polyglot and why it defeats file inspection

The payload retrieved by mshta.exe in Stage 1 is one of the more technically elegant evasion constructions seen in commodity malware recently. It is a 6.7 MB file that simultaneously satisfies the parsing rules of two completely different file formats: MP3 and HTA.

The file carries a valid ID3v2.4 tag, embedded JPEG cover art, and playable MPEG audio frames occupying the first approximately 4.7 MB of the file. It is a real, playable MP3. Open it in VLC or Windows Media Player and it plays. A security tool that classifies files by header, magic bytes, or content inspection will see a legitimate MP3 and move on.

When mshta.exe processes the same file, it parses linearly. It moves past the audio content, reaches the embedded HTA script block at the end of the file, and executes it. The same bytes, two completely different runtime interpretations. Sandbox environments that open the file as media may deprioritise analysis entirely, which is precisely the intent.

This is the Living Off the Land principle applied at the file format level. The attacker is not hiding malicious code in an obviously suspicious container. They are hiding it inside something that looks like exactly what it claims to be.

Defender note: mshta.exe initiating outbound HTTPS connections to external infrastructure has no legitimate use in most enterprise environments. Blocking or alerting on mshta.exe network activity catches this stage regardless of payload obfuscation. MITRE technique: T1218.005.

Stage 2: AMSI bypass, RC4 decryption, and victim fingerprinting

The HTA registered a scheduled task through the Schedule.Service COM object to spawn cmd.exe with delayed-expansion enabled. The command line reconstructed the string "powershell" at runtime using split variables to break static signature detection, then explicitly invoked the 32-bit PowerShell binary at %windir%\SysWOW64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe.

Targeting the 32-bit binary is deliberate. EDR telemetry coverage is frequently weighted toward 64-bit process activity. By invoking the 32-bit PowerShell host, the attacker reduces the likelihood of being captured in high-fidelity telemetry streams that a security operations team would be monitoring.

The PowerShell script executed a Base64-encoded payload that performed three sequential operations. First, an AMSI bypass: it patched System.Management.Automation.AmsiUtils.amsiInitFailed in memory via Marshal::WriteInt32, disabling in-process script scanning before any further stages are executed. This is a well-documented technique, but its effectiveness depends on the EDR not having already instrumented the AMSI interfaces at a lower level. Many commodity endpoints have not.

Second, RC4 string decryption: sensitive string constants were decrypted at runtime using the hardcoded key BWJFEesMEqRvjQbm, keeping indicators out of static analysis. Any analyst examining the script without executing it sees only ciphertext where the meaningful strings would be.

Third, victim fingerprinting: the script computed an MD5 hash of COMPUTERNAME concatenated with USERNAME to generate a unique subdomain label for the Stage 3 download URL. This fingerprinting step is the architectural foundation of the campaign's most effective IOC-defeating mechanism.

Defender note: 32-bit PowerShell spawned from a scheduled task registered via COM object is rare in enterprise environments and represents a high-confidence detection signal. MITRE techniques: T1059.001, T1562.001, T1027.

Stage 3: The 17 MB obfuscation fortress and per-victim infrastructure

Stage 2 used the MD5 victim fingerprint as a subdomain label to construct a unique retrieval URL in the format https://MD5_HASH.oakenfjrod[.]ru/cloude-uuid. The loader issued an HTTPS GET request to this URL and piped the response directly into IEX for in-memory execution, inheriting the AMSI-disabled state from Stage 2. Nothing was written to disk.

The retrieved Stage 3 script is approximately 17 MB. This is not accidental. Legitimate PowerShell loaders are typically under 100 KB. The size here is engineered as a weapon against the analysis pipeline itself.

Automated deobfuscators have memory and time limits. Sandbox environments have resource constraints. Human analysts have finite patience for unwinding nested obfuscation layers at 17 MB of scale. The size is a deliberate tax on the defender's analysis capability, designed to make full deobfuscation expensive enough that many analysts will give up or accept a partial result.

The obfuscation layers stacked inside this script are comprehensive. Massive integer-encoded byte arrays that must be reconstructed before any logic surfaces. Multi-layer string fragmentation using split-and-concatenate chains and character-code substitution. Runtime variable name mangling with identifiers reassigned dynamically to break cross-references between analysis passes. Stacked Base64 and RC4 decryption layers that must be unwound in the correct sequence. A third XOR layer using the key AMSI_RESULT_NOT_DETECTED, a detail worth pausing on: the attacker used Microsoft's own AMSI bypass indicator string as a decryption key, which is either a deliberate provocation or a functional choice that also serves as a signature-defeating red herring. And finally, the reflective .NET shellcode carried inline as a byte array, removing the need for any additional network fetch at this stage.

The per-victim subdomain structure deserves particular attention from a threat intelligence perspective. Every victim gets a unique URL derived from their machine name and username. Static IOC sharing at the URL level is therefore functionally useless. Sharing the URL a specific victim connected to does nothing for the next victim, because their URL will be completely different. The only meaningful IOC at this layer is the domain itself: oakenfjrod[.]ru. Wildcard blocking on that domain is the correct defensive response, not per-subdomain matching.

Defender note: DNS queries to *.oakenfjrod[.]ru are a strong indicator of compromise. Block and alert at the domain level. Per-subdomain IOC matching is ineffective by design. MITRE techniques: T1568, T1620.

Stage 4: The reflective .NET infostealer and what it takes

The terminal stage is a .NET-based infostealer delivered as raw bytes embedded inside the Stage 3 PowerShell script. It is never written to disk. It never loads as a module. It never spawns a child process. The entire stealer executes inside the existing powershell.exe address space.

The loading technique abuses the .NET Framework's built-in ability to execute managed code directly from a byte array in memory via Assembly.Load(byte[]). This is functionally equivalent to techniques used by Cobalt Strike's execute-assembly, Donut, and SharpSploit, but executed entirely from PowerShell without an unmanaged loader stub. The consequence for defenders is significant: there is no file artifact on disk, no new process entry in the process tree, and no image-load event tied to a suspicious file path. The traditional tripwires that defenders have built detection around simply do not fire.

The infostealer beacons over HTTPS to 185[.]177[.]239[.]255:443 for command and control and credential exfiltration. The IP resolves to Russian infrastructure. SensitiveFileRead telemetry from Cyderes Howler Cell's analysis confirms browser credential store access during execution, meaning the stealer is actively harvesting saved passwords, session tokens, and authentication cookies from the victim's browser profiles.

Defender note: .NET assembly loads from PowerShell without a corresponding file on disk are detectable via ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) and process memory inspection. EDR platforms with .NET assembly load visibility catch this where file-based controls cannot. MITRE techniques: T1620, T1555.003, T1041.

The full MITRE ATT&CK mapping

T1204.003 User Execution via ClickFix: Win+R paste of attacker-supplied MSHTA command triggering hands-on keyboard execution.

T1218.005 Signed Binary Proxy via mshta.exe: mshta.exe fetched and executed a remote HTA payload disguised as an MP3 file.

T1059.001 PowerShell: Base64 and RC4-obfuscated encoded commands across multiple stages.

T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information: RC4 encryption of sensitive string literals, integer-encoded byte arrays, and runtime variable mangling.

T1562.001 Impair Defenses via AMSI Bypass: Marshal::WriteInt32 used to set amsiInitFailed via reflection, disabling in-process script scanning.

T1620 Reflective Code Loading: Reflective .NET stealer loaded entirely in memory via Assembly.Load(byte[]), leaving no file artifact.

T1071.001 Application Layer Protocol via HTTPS: C2 communications on port 443 across all stages, blending with legitimate encrypted traffic.

T1568 Dynamic Resolution: Per-victim C2 subdomain derived from MD5(COMPUTERNAME+USERNAME), making static IOC sharing ineffective.

T1555.003 Credentials from Browser: SensitiveFileRead events confirm browser credential store access during final stage execution.

T1041 Exfiltration Over C2 Channel: Harvested credentials exfiltrated to 185[.]177[.]239[.]255.

Indicators of compromise

Domain: download.version-516[.]com - HTA payload delivery, fake Claude download site

Domain: oakenfjrod[.]ru - Stage 3 C2, block as wildcard *.oakenfjrod[.]ru

IP: 185[.]177[.]239[.]255 - Final stealer C2, Russian infrastructure

URL pattern: https://[md5_16char].oakenfjrod[.]ru/cloude-[uuid] - Per-victim beacon URL structure, unique per machine

What makes this campaign notable and what to do about it

The operators behind this campaign did not rely on a single trick. They stacked deliberate evasion choices end-to-end and produced a chain where each traditional detection surface has been accounted for at the design stage. The MP3/HTA polyglot defeats file-type filtering. The 32-bit PowerShell invocation reduces EDR telemetry coverage. The AMSI bypass clears the path for in-memory execution. The 17 MB Stage 3 script is sized to break analysis tooling and exhaust sandbox resources. The per-victim subdomain structure neutralises static IOC sharing. The reflective .NET final stage leaves no file, no new process, and no image-load artifact.

What is notable is not the novelty of any individual technique. Each component is documented and understood by the security community. What is notable is the targeting logic: a rapidly growing population of non-technical users with high motivation, low threat awareness, and a search engine that, for a moment, put the attacker exactly where a legitimate download page should have been.

For defenders, the actionable steps are clear. Block mshta.exe outbound network connections at the endpoint level. Alert on 32-bit PowerShell spawned from scheduled tasks registered via COM objects. Apply wildcard DNS blocking on oakenfjrod[.]ru immediately. Deploy EDR platforms with ETW-based .NET assembly load visibility. And brief non-technical users in your organisation who may be using AI development tools: if an installation guide asks you to paste a command into the Windows Run dialog, stop and verify before proceeding.

For the broader security community, this campaign is a preview of what commodity malware targeting AI-tool adopters will look like as the developer population expands. The attack surface is growing faster than the security awareness of the people being added to it. Campaigns like this one are a direct consequence of that gap.

Full technical research and IOC details by Cyderes Howler Cell. Subscribe to their research feed for ongoing infrastructure tracking and updates as this campaign evolves.

MITRE ATT&CK techniques referenced: T1204.003, T1218.005, T1059.001, T1027, T1562.001, T1620, T1071.001, T1568, T1555.003, T1041

The Last Line:

The Last Line of Defence: How Ransomware Erases Your Recovery Options Before Encryption

Modern ransomware attacks do not begin with encryption. They begin with preparation. Long before employees see ransom notes or encrypted files, attackers quietly disable recovery mechanisms, destroy backups, and erase Windows Volume Shadow Copies. By the time encryption starts, the organization has already lost its easiest recovery path.

This article explores how ransomware families abuse tools such as vssadmin, wmic, PowerShell, and direct COM API access to destroy recovery options. We will also explore how defenders can detect these attacks early using threat hunting, SIEM correlation, behavioral analysis, and security monitoring.

Table of Contents

• What Are Shadow Copies?
• Why Shadow Copies Matter During Ransomware Attacks
• The Modern Ransomware Kill Chain
• How Attackers Use vssadmin
• How Attackers Use WMIC
• PowerShell and Advanced Evasion
• Real Ransomware Families and Techniques
• Threat Hunting and Detection Strategies
• How Organizations Should Defend Themselves
• Future of Ransomware Defense

What Are Shadow Copies?

Volume Shadow Copy Service, commonly called VSS or Shadow Copies, is a Windows technology that creates point-in-time snapshots of files and storage volumes. Microsoft introduced this feature to help users recover previous versions of files, restore systems after failures, and support backup applications.

When a user right-clicks a file in Windows and selects “Previous Versions,” the operating system may retrieve the file using VSS snapshots. These snapshots silently exist in the background and are incredibly valuable during ransomware incidents.

For many organizations, shadow copies become the fastest recovery mechanism after accidental deletion or corruption. Security teams often discover during ransomware response that shadow copies represent the difference between quick recovery and catastrophic downtime.

“Ransomware operators understand one critical principle: destroying backups increases the probability of payment.”

Because of this, ransomware operators aggressively target:

• Volume Shadow Copies
• Backup servers
• Database snapshots
• Cloud backup agents
• Recovery catalogs
• Disaster recovery infrastructure

Why Shadow Copies Matter During Ransomware Attacks

Many organizations mistakenly assume ransomware attacks begin with encryption. In reality, modern ransomware campaigns are highly organized operations involving:

• Initial access
• Credential theft
• Lateral movement
• Privilege escalation
• Data exfiltration
• Recovery destruction
• Encryption deployment

Destroying shadow copies gives attackers enormous leverage. Without recovery options, organizations face:

• Longer downtime
• Business disruption
• Higher recovery costs
• Operational paralysis
• Increased pressure to pay ransom

Ransomware Statistics

• More than 90% of modern ransomware attacks attempt backup destruction.
• Average ransomware recovery costs continue rising yearly.
• Downtime often lasts weeks after enterprise ransomware incidents.
• Double extortion attacks now combine encryption and data theft.

Attackers no longer depend only on encryption. They depend on psychological pressure.

If victims can restore systems easily, ransom payments decrease significantly. Therefore, deleting shadow copies is often prioritized before encryption even begins.

The Modern Ransomware Kill Chain

Modern ransomware groups operate like professional businesses. Many ransomware gangs use a Ransomware-as-a-Service model where affiliates perform attacks using shared malware platforms.

Stage 1: Initial Access

Attackers enter organizations through:

• Phishing emails
• Compromised VPN accounts
• Exposed RDP servers
• Software vulnerabilities
• Third-party supply chain compromises

Stage 2: Privilege Escalation

Attackers attempt to obtain administrator or SYSTEM privileges. Without elevated permissions, many destructive operations cannot succeed.

Stage 3: Internal Reconnaissance

Threat actors map the environment carefully:

• Domain controllers
• File servers
• Database servers
• Backup systems
• Security software

Stage 4: Data Exfiltration

Modern ransomware operations frequently steal sensitive files before encryption. This allows attackers to threaten public leaks if victims refuse payment.

Stage 5: Shadow Copy Destruction

This stage is critically important.

Attackers disable:

• Windows recovery features
• Backup agents
• VSS snapshots
• System restore points

Stage 6: Encryption

Only after preparation is complete does encryption begin.

By then, attackers often already control the environment completely.

How Attackers Use vssadmin

One of the most abused Windows utilities in ransomware operations is:

vssadmin.exe

This built-in Windows tool manages Volume Shadow Copy Service snapshots.

Attackers commonly execute:

vssadmin delete shadows /all /quiet

This command silently deletes all shadow copies without requiring user confirmation.

The command is devastatingly effective because:

• It uses legitimate Microsoft software
• It exists on almost every Windows system
• Many security tools historically trusted it
• It requires minimal attacker effort

This technique belongs to a broader category known as:

Living Off The Land (LotL)

Living Off The Land techniques use legitimate operating system tools for malicious purposes. This helps attackers evade antivirus products and reduce suspicious malware artifacts.

Why vssadmin Detection Is Difficult

System administrators legitimately use vssadmin for:

• Storage management
• Backup maintenance
• Troubleshooting
• System recovery operations

Therefore, security teams cannot simply alert on every vssadmin execution. Effective detection requires context.

How Attackers Use WMIC

As defenders improved monitoring for vssadmin abuse, ransomware operators adapted quickly.

They increasingly shifted toward:

wmic shadowcopy delete

WMIC, or Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line utility, provides another method for manipulating system management functions.

Attackers realized many detection systems only monitored vssadmin command lines. Switching to WMIC helped bypass simplistic detection logic.

Why WMIC Is Dangerous

WMIC allows:

• Remote administration
• System inventory collection
• Shadow copy manipulation
• Process execution
• Persistence techniques

Attackers increasingly combine WMIC with:

• PowerShell
• Encoded commands
• Scheduled tasks
• Remote execution frameworks

This makes forensic analysis significantly more complicated.

PowerShell and Advanced Evasion

Modern ransomware groups rarely rely on a single technique.

As defenders improve visibility into command-line tools, attackers migrate toward:

• PowerShell automation
• Direct API calls
• COM interface abuse
• Custom binaries

Encoded PowerShell Commands

Attackers frequently Base64 encode PowerShell commands to hide suspicious strings from security tools.

Example techniques include:

• Encoded WMI commands
• Memory-only execution
• Fileless malware behavior
• Reflection-based execution

COM API Abuse

Some advanced ransomware families bypass vssadmin and WMIC entirely.

Instead, they directly call Windows COM interfaces associated with VSS management.

This significantly reduces forensic evidence because:

• No suspicious command lines appear
• No child processes spawn
• Traditional EDR signatures may fail
• Behavior resembles legitimate system activity

“The future of ransomware detection depends on behavioral analysis, not simple signature matching.”

Real Ransomware Families and Techniques

Different ransomware groups use different methods for destroying recovery infrastructure.

Ransomware Family	Technique
LockBit	WMIC and PowerShell-based deletion
Conti	vssadmin shadow deletion
BlackCat / ALPHV	Rust-based payloads and API abuse
Hive	Shadow storage resizing and deletion
REvil	Combined backup and VSS destruction
BlackMatter	Direct COM API invocation

LockBit

LockBit became one of the most widespread ransomware families globally. Its operators aggressively evolved techniques to evade detection.

Security researchers observed LockBit variants rotating between:

• vssadmin
• WMIC
• PowerShell
• Encoded commands

This flexibility made static detection rules unreliable.

BlackCat / ALPHV

BlackCat attracted attention because it used the Rust programming language.

Rust offers:

• Cross-platform capability
• Memory safety advantages
• Complex analysis challenges
• Efficient execution

BlackCat operators focused heavily on stealth and minimized suspicious process creation.

Threat Hunting and Detection Strategies

Effective ransomware defense requires layered visibility.

Organizations should monitor:

• Process creation events
• Command-line arguments
• PowerShell execution
• WMI activity
• Privilege escalation
• Mass file modification behavior

Behavior-Based Detection

Security teams should focus on intent rather than only syntax.

For example:

• Unknown process spawning vssadmin at 2 AM
• Backup deletion combined with credential dumping
• Bulk process termination before encryption
• Simultaneous security tool tampering

These patterns strongly indicate malicious activity.

SIEM Correlation

Modern SIEM platforms should correlate:

• Process telemetry
• Network connections
• User authentication
• Threat intelligence feeds
• Endpoint behavior

Single alerts are often noisy. Correlated behaviors create higher confidence detection.

Threat Hunting Queries

Threat hunters commonly search for:

vssadmin delete shadows wmic shadowcopy delete powershell Get-WmiObject Win32_ShadowCopy

However, mature hunting teams also investigate:

• Encoded PowerShell
• Suspicious parent-child process relationships
• Rare administrative tool execution
• Abnormal administrative activity

How Organizations Should Defend Themselves

1. Immutable Backups

Organizations must implement backup systems attackers cannot modify easily.

Immutable backups prevent:

• Deletion
• Encryption
• Tampering
• Unauthorized modification

2. Privileged Access Management

Restricting administrative privileges reduces attacker capability dramatically.

Many ransomware attacks succeed because:

• Users possess unnecessary privileges
• Shared admin accounts exist
• Password reuse occurs
• Domain-wide privileges remain excessive

3. EDR and Behavioral Monitoring

Endpoint Detection and Response platforms should monitor:

• Process execution chains
• Script behavior
• Memory anomalies
• Persistence techniques
• Recovery destruction attempts

4. Network Segmentation

Segmentation prevents attackers from moving freely across environments.

Critical infrastructure should remain isolated from:

• User workstations
• Development systems
• Internet-facing services

5. Incident Response Preparedness

Organizations should rehearse ransomware response scenarios regularly.

Prepared teams recover faster because:

• Roles are predefined
• Recovery procedures exist
• Communication plans are established
• Forensic workflows are tested

Future of Ransomware Defense

Ransomware continues evolving rapidly.

Future ransomware operations will likely incorporate:

• AI-assisted phishing
• Automated lateral movement
• Cloud infrastructure targeting
• EDR evasion frameworks
• Advanced anti-forensics

Defenders must evolve equally fast.

Future cybersecurity operations will increasingly depend on:

• Behavioral analytics
• Machine learning detection
• Threat intelligence sharing
• Automation
• Zero Trust architectures

“The organizations that survive ransomware attacks are not necessarily the ones with the most expensive tools. They are the ones with visibility, preparation, and disciplined operational security.”

Final Thoughts

Shadow copy deletion may appear technically simple, but its impact is enormous.

A few commands executed in seconds can transform a manageable security incident into a catastrophic business crisis.

Understanding how ransomware operators destroy recovery infrastructure is no longer optional for security professionals. SOC analysts, incident responders, threat hunters, and defenders must understand:

• How attackers abuse Windows utilities
• How modern ransomware kill chains operate
• How behavioral detection works
• How to protect recovery infrastructure

Modern ransomware defense depends not only on preventing malware execution, but also on protecting the organization's ability to recover.

Because once shadow copies disappear, the attack has already entered its most dangerous phase.

First Job in Tech. Everyone Celebrates. Nobody Warns You About This.

You have the offer letter.

After the campus interviews, the aptitude tests, the technical rounds, the HR calls, the waiting, the refreshing your email every hour, you finally have it. Your name. A company. A joining date.

Take a moment. You earned this.

Now let me tell you what happens next. Not the version from the placement cell brochure. The real version.

The Project You Get Will Probably Not Be the One You Wanted

You joined this company because of something. Maybe their cybersecurity team. Maybe their AI division. Maybe the product that made them famous. You read about it, prepared for it, interviewed with that picture in your mind.

And on your first week, you will be allocated to a project.

There is a reasonable chance it is not what you pictured.

This moment, quiet and undramatic as it sounds, is one of the most important tests of your early career. And most fresh graduates fail it.

Some of them speak up immediately. They walk into their manager's cabin or send an email explaining that this was not what they signed up for, or that they specifically wanted the product team, or that they feel their skills are better suited elsewhere. They frame it as self-awareness. As knowing their worth.

I have personally watched this play out. I have seen new hires, talented ones, ask to be moved to a different project because they did not like what they were assigned. Some were put on the bench immediately. Some were let go quietly. The organisation did not fight to keep them. Because in the first three months, you are not yet someone the organisation has invested in deeply enough to accommodate.

You are a new hire. You are being evaluated every single day, not just on your technical output, but on your attitude, your adaptability, your professionalism under conditions that are not ideal.

You are a small fish. They are a very large ocean. That is not an insult. It is just the geometry of where you are standing right now.

Survival Is the First Chapter. Not the Whole Book.

This does not mean you surrender your ambitions. It means you sequence them correctly.

The first step is survival. Do your job well. Whatever project you are on, find something in it worth doing properly. Every domain has depth if you look for it. Every project has a problem worth solving well. Show up. Deliver. Be the person your team can rely on.

This builds something invisible but enormously valuable: a reputation. Not a loud one. A quiet one. The kind where your manager thinks of you as solid. As dependable. As someone worth keeping and eventually moving.

You cannot skip this chapter. The people who try to skip it either get benched or burn out trying to fight a system that has no obligation to rearrange itself for a fresher.

Survive first. Grow next. In that order.

But Here Is What Most People Get Wrong After Getting the Job

They stop.

The reading stops. The learning stops. The curiosity that got them through college, that pushed them through late nights and difficult subjects, quietly switches off the moment the salary starts coming in.

I understand why. The job is exhausting. The commute is real. The social life after years of campus feels like something you deserve. And you do deserve rest.

But here is what nobody tells you: the first two to three years of your career are the single best time to learn you will ever have.

You have income but no dependents yet. You have structure but still have energy. You have exposure to real systems, real codebases, real infrastructure, things no textbook or course can fully simulate. And you have time outside of work that is genuinely yours in a way it will not always be later.

Most people waste this window. The ones who do not waste it are the ones you will look up to in ten years and wonder how they got so far ahead.

What to Do With the Time Outside of Work

Keep reading. Not casually. Deliberately.

Take the domain that genuinely excites you, the one that lit something in you during college, and go deeper into it now. Not to get a certificate. Not to add a line to your resume. Because you are genuinely hungry to understand it.

I will tell you what this looked like for me personally.

I was working in cybersecurity. My job had a specific scope. But outside of that scope, I kept reading. I explored areas of cybersecurity beyond what my project required. I picked up malware analysis not because my job demanded it, but because something about understanding how malicious code behaves at a deep level felt important and fascinating to me.

And then I went one step further.

I had always been drawn to quantum physics. Not as a career switch. Not as a plan. As a genuine intellectual curiosity that had lived quietly alongside everything else I was doing. So I followed it. I read. I explored quantum computing, the intersection of quantum mechanics and information theory, a field that most people in cybersecurity were not paying attention to yet.

That curiosity eventually led me to contribute to book chapters on quantum computing. Not because I had a master plan. Because I kept showing up for the things that genuinely interested me, even when nobody was asking me to.

Nobody tells a fresh graduate that this is possible. That you can hold a full time job in one domain while building genuine depth in another. That your curiosity is not something to park until you have more time. That the after-hours hours are where the interesting version of your career gets built.

The Reading Habit Is Not Optional

The professionals you will admire most in your field, the ones who seem to always know more, always see further, always have a perspective worth hearing, are almost universally people who never stopped reading.

Not just articles. Books. Research papers. Technical documentation. Things that are hard and slow and require you to sit with discomfort until something clicks.

Pick one book in your domain every month or two. Pick one research paper every few weeks. It does not have to be fast. It has to be consistent.

After two years of this, you will not recognise the gap between yourself and the people around you who stopped learning when the salary started. It will be visible to you. And eventually, it will be visible to the people making decisions about who gets opportunities.

The Job Market Is Wide Open. But Only for the Right Version of You.

People say the job market is tough. And in some ways it is. Competition is real. The bar keeps rising.

But here is the other side of that truth. Most people plateau early. Most people stop growing in year two or three. Most people become very good at exactly what their job requires and nothing beyond it.

The job market is genuinely wide open for the person who has kept going. Who has spent two years delivering reliably at work and building real depth outside of it. Who has followed a curiosity all the way to the edge of their comfort and then kept going a little further.

That person is rare. Organisations know it. Opportunities find that person. They do not have to chase most of them.

You can be that person. Not through intensity for a week. Through consistency for years.

A Note Before You Go

This article is the fourth in a series walking through every stage of the computer science journey, from the student choosing subjects in 10th standard, to the college fresher finding their footing, to you, standing at the beginning of your professional life.

If you missed any part of this journey, read them in order. Each one builds on the last.

If you are a student finishing 10th standard and choosing your path, start here: What every 10th standard student choosing Computer Science needs to hear

If you just finished plus two and are stepping into college: You Passed Plus Two. Everyone Is Celebrating. But Nobody Told You This.

And if you are in your final years of college, wondering what comes next in a world that never seems to settle: You Are in Your Final Years of College. The World Looks Scary. It Always Has.

The world does not get easier from here. But you get stronger. One deliberate year at a time.

Go build the version of yourself that the next chapter requires.

You Are in Your Final Years of College. The World Looks Scary. It Always Has.

Stop for a moment.

Look around your college campus. Talk to your batchmates. Scroll through LinkedIn. Everyone seems anxious. Everyone is updating their resume, attending placement drives, comparing backlogs, whispering about the job market being tough right now.

And somewhere inside you, there is a quiet fear you have not said out loud yet.

What if there is no place for me out there?

I want to tell you something that nobody told me when I was sitting exactly where you are sitting right now. Something that took years after college to fully understand.

The world has never been stable. Not once. Not for any generation before you. And the students who came out of college strong were not the ones who waited for the world to calm down. They were the ones who stopped waiting.

Every Generation Got Their Version of the Crisis

In 2000, the dot-com bubble burst. Companies that were worth billions on paper evaporated overnight. Engineers who had joined startups with stock options and dreams woke up to find their offices locked. An entire generation of computer science graduates stepped out into a job market that had just collapsed. They were told the internet was a mistake. That the tech dream was over.

It was not over. It was restructuring. The ones who stayed curious came out the other side building the internet as we know it today.

In 2008, the global financial crisis hit. Banks collapsed. Recession spread across every industry. Students who were about to graduate watched campus placements dry up one by one. Companies rescinded offers. People who had worked for years lost jobs overnight. The fear was not just professional. It was existential. It felt like the floor had disappeared.

I know that fear personally. I was a student during that period. I watched my batchmates prepare resume after resume, attend interview after interview, and come back with nothing. The world felt like it was coming apart at the seams. Like we had studied for years and arrived at a door that no longer existed.

In 2020, COVID shut the entire planet down. Campuses closed. Internships vanished. Graduation ceremonies happened on a screen. An entire batch of students entered the workforce during a global lockdown with no roadmap, no precedent, and no certainty about anything.

In 2022, Generative AI arrived and within months began doing things that people had spent entire careers building. Writers, coders, designers, analysts. Every knowledge profession looked at these tools and felt the ground shift again. Students who had just chosen their specialisation started wondering if their choice still made sense.

Every single generation got their version of this.

And every single generation had students who came through it and built something real.

The crisis is not the exception. The crisis is the condition. The world has always been firefighting. It always will be. The question is never whether the world is stable enough for you to begin. The question is what you are building inside yourself while the world figures itself out.

What College Actually Gave You That You Might Have Missed

In your first two years, if you followed the path we described in the earlier articles in this series, you went deep into the fundamentals. Operating systems. Computer architecture. Data structures. Discrete mathematics. You built the floor.

But something else happened in those years that you may not have noticed. College opened doors to rooms you did not know existed.

Networks and security. Compiler design. Database internals. Computer graphics. Distributed systems. Artificial intelligence. Human computer interaction. Embedded systems. Each subject was a window into a different world. Some of those windows probably felt like walls. Dry, abstract, impossible to connect to anything real.

But one or two of them, if you are honest with yourself, felt different. There was a lecture, or a lab session, or a late night reading a textbook, where something clicked in a way that felt almost personal. Like that subject was speaking directly to you.

That moment matters more than your CGPA. More than your placement rank. More than anything your relatives will ask about at the next family gathering.

That moment is a signal. And your final years are the time to follow it.

Go Deeper. Not Wider.

This is where most students make the fatal mistake of the final years.

They go wide. They add certifications. They learn five frameworks. They do crash courses in whatever technology is trending on LinkedIn that month. They build a resume that is four pages long and an inch deep.

Employers see through this immediately. Every hiring manager who has interviewed a hundred candidates knows the difference between someone who has touched a subject and someone who has lived inside it.

Go deep instead.

Take the subject that lit something in you and push past the textbook. This is where foreign authors become essential. Not because your professors or local textbooks are wrong. They are often excellent. But a foreign author writing for a global research audience is writing about how that domain behaves universally. They are writing for practitioners in Boston and Berlin and Bangalore. They are not writing for an exam. They are writing for someone who wants to understand the thing itself.

Read research papers. Yes, they are dense. Yes, the first few will feel like reading a foreign language. Read them anyway. Start with the abstract and the conclusion. Work backwards. Look up every term you do not understand. The discipline of reading a research paper trains your brain in a way that no course ever will. You stop being a consumer of knowledge and start becoming someone capable of producing it.

Find the researchers, practitioners, and writers in your chosen domain who are doing the most interesting work globally. Follow them. Read what they read. Understand what problems they consider unsolved. That is the frontier. And the frontier is where careers are made.

Understand Your Limitations. Honestly.

This is the part nobody wants to hear. So I will say it plainly.

You are not going to be exceptional at everything. Nobody is. The students who pretend otherwise spend years chasing a version of themselves that does not exist, burning time and confidence in the process.

Sit quietly and ask yourself what you are genuinely good at. Not what you wish you were good at. Not what looks impressive. What you actually do well when nobody is watching and there is no grade attached.

Maybe you are someone who can read complex systems and find where they break. Maybe you are someone who can explain difficult things simply. Maybe you are someone with an unusual tolerance for ambiguity who can sit with an unsolved problem longer than most people can. These are not small things. These are rare things.

Know your strengths. Know your gaps. Be honest about both. And then build your final two years around moving in the direction your strengths point, while quietly working on the gaps that would hold you back.

This is not pessimism. This is navigation. A ship that knows exactly where it is can chart any course. A ship that does not know its own position cannot go anywhere with intention.

A Note on the Paths Around You

Look at your batchmates and you will see several different stories unfolding.

Some of them have parents, relatives, or working professionals in their life who have given them clear guidance. They already know which company to target, which role fits their background, which certification opens which door. This is a real advantage. If you have this, use it fully and be grateful for it.

Some of them are wired differently. They are not looking for a job. They are looking for a problem. They stay up late not studying for exams but obsessing over something that does not work yet and needs to be fixed. Some of these people will end up as entrepreneurs. Not because entrepreneurship was their plan, but because their curiosity would not let them stop at someone else's solution.

Both of these paths are real. Both produce extraordinary outcomes. But they are outliers. They are the minority.

Most of you are the general student. Talented, capable, uncertain, and trying to find your footing in a world that has not made it easy. And that is completely fine. This article is written for you.

For the general student, the path is not glamorous. It is consistent. Go deep in what genuinely interests you. Read beyond the syllabus. Understand the global shape of your domain. Know yourself honestly. Build skills that are real, not skills that look good on a slide.

That is not a lesser path. That is the path that quietly produces the professionals that every organisation actually depends on.

The World Will Not Wait. Neither Should You.

There will always be a recession somewhere. There will always be a disruption rewriting the rules. There will always be a reason to wait until things settle down.

Things do not settle down. They shift. And then they shift again.

The students who come out of college ready are not the ones who had the best timing. They are the ones who used their final years to build something that does not depend on timing. Deep knowledge. Genuine skill. An honest understanding of who they are and what they are capable of.

The world was never going to hand you a good moment. You were always going to have to build your readiness during someone else's chaos.

So build it. Starting now.

And if you are reading this having just finished 10th standard and choosing your path, start with the foundation: What every 10th standard student choosing Computer Science needs to hear

If you just finished plus two and are entering college, this is the most important thing you can read before your first semester begins: You Passed Plus Two. Everyone Is Celebrating. But Nobody Told You This.

The next article in this series is for the student who has just graduated and is stepping into the job market for the first time. That one is coming soon. It will be worth the wait.

For now, you have your final years. Use them like they are the last time you will have this kind of freedom to go deep without the pressure of a deadline.

Because they are.

You Passed Plus Two. Everyone Is Celebrating. But Nobody Told You This.

You did it.

Plus two is done. The board exams, the sleepless nights, the mark sheets, all of it. And now you are standing at the entrance of college, a computer science degree ahead of you, a head full of excitement and maybe a quiet fear you have not told anyone about.

Maybe you came from a Maths Biology background like many students do, switching tracks at the last moment because something about computers felt magnetic. Maybe you spent your plus two years dreaming about building video games, or making apps, or doing something with AI that you cannot yet fully describe. Maybe you watched one YouTube video about hacking and thought, that is it, that is what I want to do.

Whatever brought you here, welcome. You are exactly where you need to be.

But before your first lecture begins, before you buy your first programming book or download your first IDE, there is something I need to tell you. Something that most college seniors will not say out loud because it sounds uncomfortable. Something that took a mentor I know years of painful detours to understand.

The way most students spend their first two years of college is completely backwards.

The Excitement Trap

Here is what happens to almost every CS fresher.

They arrive at college buzzing with a specific dream. Games. Apps. AI. Cybersecurity. They have a target. They want to get there fast. So they open YouTube, they find a course on Unity game development or ethical hacking or Python for machine learning, and they start. They feel productive. They feel like they are ahead.

And for a few weeks, it works. Things seem to click.

Then they hit something. A concept that does not make sense. A problem that the tutorial did not prepare them for. A question from a professor that makes them realise they are holding a tool they do not actually understand.

They go back to YouTube. Find another course. Start again.

Three semesters pass this way. And by the time they reach their third year, they have touched fifteen technologies and deeply understood none of them. They can follow tutorials. They cannot think independently.

This is the excitement trap. And it catches almost everyone.

What the Internals Actually Are

I know a mentor who came into college from a Maths Biology background. No CS in school. Everyone around him had been coding since 9th standard and he felt like he was already three years behind.

He wanted to build games. That was the dream. So he started learning game development. But somewhere along the way, trying to understand why his code behaved a certain way, he stumbled into operating systems. Then into computer architecture. Then into microprocessors. He started understanding how a CPU actually executes an instruction. How memory is laid out. How a process is born and killed by an OS. How a program sits in memory and what it looks like from the inside.

And something shifted. The game development dream did not disappear. But something far more interesting replaced it: he could now see underneath the surface of everything. He understood why software behaved the way it did. Not just how to use it. Why it worked, and more importantly, why it sometimes broke.

That curiosity pulled him all the way into reverse engineering. Taking software apart to understand what it does at the machine level. A field that sits at the deepest intersection of computer architecture, operating systems, and raw analytical thinking.

He did not plan to go there. The internals took him there. And he has never regretted following that path.

This is not a unique story. This is how the most interesting people in computer science arrive at what they do. Not by targeting a destination. By following curiosity into the foundations.

What Your First Two Years Are Actually For

Your first two years in college are not for specialisation. They are for building the mental infrastructure that every specialisation stands on.

Operating Systems. This is not a boring subject about memory management. This is the subject that explains why your phone slows down, why your browser uses so much RAM, how programs talk to hardware without destroying each other, and what actually happens when you double-click an icon. Every cybersecurity professional, every game developer, every systems programmer lives inside this subject daily.

Computer Architecture and Microprocessors. This is where you learn what a computer actually is, not a box running software, but a machine executing instructions one at a time in a very specific way. When you understand this, you stop being a user of computers and start being someone who truly operates them.

Data Structures and Algorithms. This is the grammar of programming. Not a specific language. The underlying logic of how problems are structured and solved efficiently. Every technical interview in every CS company in the world tests this. More importantly, it trains your brain to think in a way that no tutorial ever will.

Discrete Mathematics. Logic, sets, graph theory, combinatorics. Dry-sounding words that are the skeleton underneath databases, networking, cryptography, and compiler design. You cannot go deep in any of these without Discrete Maths underneath you.

These are not subjects to survive. They are subjects to inhabit. Sit with them. Ask uncomfortable questions. Connect them to each other. This is where the real education happens, not in the certificate courses you do on the side.

But I Still Want to Learn Programming

Good. You should. And here is how to do it without falling into the trap.

Learn one language properly. Not ten languages at the surface level. One language, deeply. Understand how it manages memory. Understand how it handles errors. Write programmes that break and figure out why. C is painful and perfect for this. Python is forgiving and useful. Either works. What matters is depth, not breadth.

Build something small and finish it. Not a grand project. A small working thing. A calculator. A simple text adventure. A tool that automates something annoying in your own life. Finishing a small thing teaches you more than abandoning ten ambitious ones.

And when you hit something confusing, something that does not make sense, do not skip it. That confusion is pointing you toward a gap in your foundation. Go back. Fill the gap. The students who do this in their first two years are the ones who seem effortlessly capable in their third and fourth years.

The Language Point, Again

If you read our previous article written for students finishing 10th standard, you already know this. But it carries even more weight now.

You are in college. You will write lab records, project reports, internship applications, and emails to professors. You will give presentations. You will sit in group discussions and technical interviews where what you say matters as much as what you know.

There are ideas in computer science, genuinely important ones, that are so complex they push the limits of what language can express. A researcher describing a new cryptographic protocol is not just solving a technical problem. They are also doing a translation job, converting something that exists in mathematics into something a human being can read and act on. That translation skill is rare. And it is worth more than most technical skills in the long run.

So speak in class even when you are not sure. Write your reports with care, not just to complete them. Read well-written technical blogs and notice how the author builds an argument. Communication is not a soft skill. In this field, it is a force multiplier.

The Real Question for Your First Two Years

Not "what technology should I learn?" That question leads to the excitement trap.

The real question is: "Do I understand what is actually happening inside this machine?"

When you can answer yes to that, every technology you pick up after that becomes easy. Because you are no longer learning tools. You are recognising familiar patterns in new shapes.

The students who ask the second question in their first two years are the ones who end up with options. Job offers. Research opportunities. The ability to walk into any room in this industry and hold their own.

You Are Not Behind

If you came from Maths Biology, if you have never written a line of code, if everyone around you seems to already know things you have not heard of, none of that matters as much as you think it does.

What matters is what you do in the next two years. Not how fast. Not how many technologies. How deep.

Go deep on the fundamentals. Let your curiosity pull you into uncomfortable subjects. Follow the thread wherever it leads, even if it takes you somewhere you did not expect.

That is how the best people in this field got there. Not by rushing toward the destination. By trusting the journey.

And if you are just beginning this journey and missed the note we wrote for students finishing 10th standard, start there first. It will give you the right context before everything we just talked about: What every 10th standard student choosing Computer Science needs to hear

The next part of this series is for college final year students and fresh graduates stepping into the job market. That is coming soon. But for now, you have everything you need to make your first two years count.

Go make them count.