Hog ransomware decrypts victims who join their Discord server spreading in the wild

The SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research team observed reports of a new variant family of Hog ransomware actively spreading in the wild.

The Hog ransomware encrypts the victim's files with a strong encryption algorithm and only decrypts them if they join the developer's Discord server.

Infection Cycle:

The ransomware adds the following files to the system:

• Malware.exe
  • %App.path%\ . Hog

Once the computer is compromised, the ransomware runs the following commands:

When Hog is started it will create and assign a unique ID number to the victim then scan all local drives for data files to encrypt.

When encrypting files it will use the AES encryption algorithm and encrypt all files except following extensions:

.exe .dll .ini .scr .sys .vmx .vmdk

The ransomware encrypts all the files and appends the [.Hog] extension onto each encrypted file's filename.

If the victim has joined the Discord server the ransomware will decrypt the victims' files using a static key embedded in the ransomware.

After encrypting all personal documents, the ransomware shows the following page containing a message reporting that the computer has been encrypted and how to unlock the files.

SonicWall Capture Labs provides protection against this threat via the following signature:

• GAV: HogRansom.RSM (Trojan)

This threat is also detected by SonicWall Capture ATP w/RTDMI and the Capture Client endpoint solutions.