Global Industries Under Siege by New Ransomware Actor ‘Dire Wolf’
VTA-004528 – Global Industries Under Siege by New Ransomware Actor ‘Dire Wolf’
Dire Wolf is a newly discovered ransomware group that was first identified in May 2025. According to a blog post published by Trustwave SpiderLabs on June 24, the group has already targeted at least 16 victims across 11 countries, with the United States, Thailand, and Taiwan being among the most affected.
Focusing primarily on the manufacturing and technology sectors, Dire Wolf employs a double-extortion tactic—encrypting victims’ files and threatening to publish stolen data unless a ransom is paid, typically within a one-month deadline. In at least one case, the ransom demand was reported to be approximately \$500,000.
The ransomware itself is a UPX-packed Go binary that checks for a marker file or mutex to avoid re-execution. It disables Windows event logging, terminates key services and processes, deletes backups, and encrypts most file types using Curve25519 and ChaCha20 encryption algorithms, appending a “.direwolf” extension to affected files.
Each ransom note appears to be customized for the individual victim and includes a unique room ID and login credentials to facilitate direct, live chat negotiations—highlighting the group’s highly targeted and sophisticated approach.
Severity:
Medium
Attack Surface:
Email, Endpoint, Remote Access Service, System Management Service, Web Application
Tactics:
Command and Control, Defense Evasion, Discovery, Execution, Exfiltration, Impact, Initial Access
Techniques:
T1566.001 – Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment
T1204 – User Execution
T1059.001 – Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell
T1027 – Obfuscated Files or Information
T1562.001 – Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools
T1070.004 – Indicator Removal: File Deletion
T1082 – System Information Discovery
T1105 – Ingress Tool Transfer
T1041 – Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
T1486 – Data Encrypted for Impact
T1490 – Inhibit System Recovery
T1489 – Service Stop
Indicator of Compromise :
1. https://otx.alienvault.com/pulse/6888b7cf4085dbc334373654
SuperPRO’s Threat Countermeasures Procedures:
1. Deploy advanced email filtering solutions to detect and block phishing emails, malicious attachments, and suspicious URLs.
2. Continuously monitor systems for anomalies, such as mass file renaming, the creation of .direwolf extensions, or unauthorized service termination.
3. Implement application control policies (e.g., AppLocker, WDAC) to restrict execution of unknown binaries, including UPX-packed Go malware and suspicious PowerShell commands.
4. Maintain a robust patch management process to ensure all operating systems, applications, and firmware are up to date, reducing exploitable vulnerabilities.
5. Enforce strong password policies and enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all remote access and privileged accounts.
6. Perform regular, automated backups of critical data and ensure at least one backup copy is offline, offsite, or immutable and periodically test backup restoration to validate ransomware resilience.
7. Monitor for suspicious script execution, use of ransomware-associated tools (vssadmin, wbadmin), or unexpected process behavior and block or alert on abnormal PowerShell, CMD, or WMI usage via EDR or sysmon logging.
8. Maintain a active incident response playbook that includes ransomware-specific procedures and communication strategies.
Contributed by: Hadi