The Snatch Ransomware Gang's Attack on CEFCO

The Snatch ransomware gang has attacked CEFCO. CEFCO, officially known as The Fikes Companies, is a prominent chain of convenience stores and gas stations with a substantial presence in the southern United States. This retail network spans across multiple states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida. CEFCO stores offer a wide range of convenience products, including snacks, beverages, prepared foods, tobacco items, and automotive supplies, serving the needs of customers in these regions. Snatch posted CEFCO to its data leak site on September 14th but provided no further details.

Background of Snatch Ransomware

Snatch is a RaaS first emerged way back in 2018 but did not become significantly active until 2021. Snatch can evade security tools and deletes Volume Shadow Copies to prevent rollbacks and any local Windows backups to thwart recovery. There has also been a Linux version observed. Snatch attack volume has been modest compared to leading ransomware operators but is on pace to increase about 50% in 2023 compared to 2022 levels.

Ransom Demands and Technical Details

Snatch ransom demands are relatively low compared to leading ransomware operators, ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. Snatch is written in Go and is somewhat unique in that the ransomware reboots in safe mode to make sure the security tools are not running. Persistence and privilege escalation are not byproducts of the reboot. Snatch abuses legitimate tools like Process Hacker, Uninstaller, IObit, BCDEDIT, PowerTool, and PsExec. Snatch deletes Volume Shadow Copies to prevent encryption rollbacks.

Targeting and Affiliate Structure

Snatch targeting varies widely based on their affiliates' preferences. Snatch is one of the more traditional RaaS platforms, where most of the targeting and attack sequence structure is left to the individual affiliates, including whether to exfiltrate data for double extortion.