U.S. and South Korean cyber agencies warned Monday about a ransomware-as-a-service outfit, Gunra, that reportedly recruits ethical hackers and penetration testers and benefits from North Korean government-linked hackers’ tools to target government and critical infrastructure organizations.

Gunra has gone after sectors such as academia, financial services and insurance, government services and facilities, healthcare, manufacturing and construction, media, retail, transportation and utilities. Its global scope is far-ranging, according to Monday’s alert: Africa, the Americas, the Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.

“Gunra is another variant in the ongoing trend of ransomware attacks causing disruption and harm to U.S. and international organizations,” said Chris Butera, acting assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which produced the advisory with the Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center, FBI, National Security Agency, Secret Service and Republic of Korea’s National Police Agency.

The alert is part of the #StopRansomware series, a joint FBI-CISA project aimed at network defenders.

The FBI first took notice of Gunra in April of last year. The double-extortion group established a data leak site on Tor to list victims and publish purloined data. By January of this year, Gunra had launched a formal ransomware-as-a-service affiliate and was growing in its ambition, Monday’s alert states.

“The FBI observed the group adopting new branding aliases (notably operating under the name Golden Community) to support this expansion,” it reads. “Gunra has further commercialized its platform by actively recruiting penetration testers and ethical hackers to serve as initial access brokers, offering a share of the ransom profits in exchange for enterprise network access.”

Gunra seeks initial access with known vulnerabilities in internet-facing devices like firewalls or virtual private networks, and is based on or influenced by the Conti ransomware code leaked in 2022, according to the agencies.

Research published in July by a South Korean cybersecurity firm took note of Gunra overlap with Lazarus Group, although it doesn’t explicitly mention the latter group’s name.

“These commonalities suggest that although the state-sponsored threat group and the Gunra ransomware group appear to be separate threat actors with different ultimate objectives, they may have shared certain techniques, tools, and infrastructure or collaborated to a limited extent during the attacks,” AhnLab wrote in its report.

That kind of North Korean government-ransomware gang collaboration dates back to at least 2024. Nor is Gunra alone among ransomware-as-a-service outfits recruiting penetration testers.

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Interpol coordinated an expansive investigation with 13 countries in the Middle East and North Africa to disrupt and take down cybercrime operations, including phishing services and tools, malware and scams. The law enforcement effort netted 201 arrests, led to the seizure of 53 servers and disrupted multiple cybercrime services, Interpol said Monday.

Operation Ramz, which the law enforcement organization said was the first large-scale effort of its kind in the region, also identified 382 suspects over a four-month period ending in February. The collective countermeasures allowed authorities to pin the various malicious activities to nearly 4,000 victims.

“In a world where cybercriminals exploit the digital landscape without borders, Operation Rams demonstrates the effectiveness of global collaboration,” Neal Jetton, Interpol’s director of cybercrime, said in a statement.

Police in Jordan tracked down a computer involved in financial fraud scams and, during a raid, found 15 people carrying out the scams who were later determined to be victims of human trafficking. The victims were recruited under false promises of employment from their home countries in Asia and had their passports confiscated upon arrival in Jordan, officials said. 

A pair of ringleaders behind the operation, who forced or coerced the victims to participate in the scheme, were arrested, according to Interpol. 

Law enforcement agencies in Algeria dismantled a phishing service by seizing a server and other devices linked to the operation. Moroccan authorities also seized multiple devices containing banking data and software for phishing operations.

Officials in Oman remediated a server containing sensitive information that was infected with malware, and compromised by vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, investigators in Qatar identified and secured multiple compromised devices that were being used, unbeknownst to their owners, of spreading malicious threats. 

Authorities involved in the months-long effort gathered almost 8,000 pieces of data that was shared among participating countries to support ongoing investigations.

Operation Ramz was supported by Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Multiple companies and organizations also helped Interpol track illegal cyber activities and identify malicious servers, including Group-IB, Kaspersky, the Shadowserver Foundation, Team Cymru and Trend Micro. 

“Interpol is dedicated to working with its member countries and private sector partners to take down malicious infrastructure, disrupt criminal groups and bring perpetrators to justice,” Jetton said.

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