Threat actors associated with the Anubis ransomware operation have been observed exploiting the Citrix Bleed 2 (CVE-2025-5777) vulnerability to obtain initial access.
“Although tactics differ between affiliates, common patterns emerged in tradecraft through use of legitimate Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM) tooling, credential access, and hands-on-keyboard procedures used for lateral movement,” Arctic Wolf said in a report published this week.
“Anubis affiliates repeatedly abused legitimate remote access and administration tools, including ScreenConnect, Zoho Assist, MeshAgent, Remotely, UltraVNC, and Total Software Deployment, to blend in with normal IT activity while maintaining control of victim systems.”
Anubis is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group that first emerged in late 2024 as a rebrand of Sphinx ransomware. The ransomware operation was formally announced on the Ransomware and Advanced Malware Protection (RAMP) underground forum in February 2025. According to data from Ransomware.Live, the cybercrime crew has claimed 91 victims on its data leak site, with 11 victims reported in June 2026 alone.
Some of the prominent sectors targeted include healthcare, business services, manufacturing, technology, and financial services. More than 50% of the victims are located in the U.S., followed by the U.K., Australia, France, and Canada.
In a report published in July 2025, Rubrik Zero Labs said Anubis advertises attractive profit splits, offering affiliates 80% of the ransom amounts paid, and pairs it with an irreversible data-wiping feature that ups the pressure on victims to pay up.
“When Anubis’s /WIPEMODE module is activated, files remain in directories but are reduced to a 0 KB size regardless of ransom payment,” Rubrik noted at the time. “Knowing threat actors can revert victims’ environments to this scorched-earth state with a single command significantly increases pressure on victims to pay before the wiper is fully activated.”
The ransomware intrusions, observed this year, involve both valid VPN credential use and the exploitation of CVE-2025-5777 (CVSS score: 9.3), a critical flaw impacting Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway that could be abused by an attacker to bypass authentication when the appliance is configured as a Gateway or AAA virtual server.
The exact source of VPN credentials used in these intrusions is unknown. However, it’s possible they were procured following prior compromise, or through initial access brokers (IABs), credential stuffing, or information stealer activity.
“In addition to CitrixBleed 2 exploitation, valid Cisco AnyConnect VPN logins were observed from several hosting ASNs, including AS20473 — The Constant Company and AS55286 — ServerMania,” Arctic Wolf explained. “Malicious VPN authentication was then followed by login activity involving RDP and SMB, leading to credential access, PsExec service creation, RMM deployment, and ultimately invoking cloud-transfer tooling for…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
