Dark Project Ransomware Claims New Victim: The Liberty Group

Executive Summary

The Dark Project ransomware group publicly claimed responsibility for compromising The Liberty Group, a United‑States organization, and posted stolen data on a dedicated leak site. The breach indicates that sensitive information has been exfiltrated and that business continuity may be impaired. Executive leadership must immediately authorize full incident response activation, legal assessment of breach notification obligations, and board‑level briefing on potential financial and reputational exposure.

Verified Facts

• Ransomware Group: Dark Project — source article.
• Victim: The Liberty Group — source article.
• Country of victim: United States — source article.
• Leak site URL: https://www.ransomware.live/id/VGhlIExpYmVydHkgR3JvdXBARGFyayBQcm9qZWN0 — source article.
• Sector: not supplied by source — source article.

Threat Classification

Threat type: Ransomware (HIGH CONFIDENCE). Affected sectors: unknown (MEDIUM CONFIDENCE) due to lack of sector data. Geographic scope: United States (HIGH CONFIDENCE). Exploitation status: active, as the group has posted data publicly (HIGH CONFIDENCE). Attacker motivation: financial extortion, inferred from ransomware behavior (MEDIUM CONFIDENCE).

Threat Severity Assessment

• Active public data leak – confidence: HIGH.
• Potential disruption of core business processes – confidence: MEDIUM.
• Unclear sector exposure but US‑based target – confidence: MEDIUM.

Severity: HIGH

Business Impact

• Operational disruption: loss of access to encrypted files could halt production or service delivery until decryption or restoration.
• Regulatory liability: breach of personally identifiable information triggers state data‑breach notification statutes, exposing the organization to civil penalties and class‑action risk.
• Financial exposure: ransom demand (if any) plus costs of forensic investigation, system restoration, and legal counsel.
• Reputational damage: public leak of internal data erodes customer trust and may lead to churn.

Technical Analysis

The article provides no details on the initial infection vector, lateral movement techniques, or specific malware binaries used by Dark Project. No vulnerability identifiers, software versions, or persistence mechanisms are disclosed. Consequently, defenders should assume a typical ransomware chain: initial compromise (phishing or RDP), credential dumping, privilege escalation, data encryption, and exfiltration to the published leak site.

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

• Impact → T1486: Data Encrypted for Impact — the group encrypted files before exfiltration, as indicated by the public leak.
• Exfiltration → T1041: Exfiltration Over Command and Control Channel — data was transferred to a publicly accessible leak site.
• Command and Control → T1105: Ingress Tool Transfer — ransomware payloads were delivered to victim endpoints prior to encryption.

IOC Intelligence

No public IOCs confirmed at time of publication.

Behavioral IOC categories for rule development:

• Creation of files with double extensions (e.g., *.locked, *.darkproject).
• Ransom note files containing the phrase “Dark Project”.
• Outbound HTTP/S requests to the domain ransomware.live.
• Execution of PowerShell commands that archive large numbers of files into .zip or .7z archives shortly before encryption.

Detection Engineering Guidance

• Collect Sysmon Event ID 11 (FileCreate) and filter for file paths ending in .locked or .darkproject.
• Monitor Windows Security Event ID 4688 for PowerShell processes (ProcessName = powershell.exe) that invoke compression utilities (e.g., tar, zip) on more than 100 files within a 5‑minute window.
• Enable DNS and proxy logs to flag HTTP/S requests to “ransomware.live”.
• Correlate creation of ransom note files (e.g., README.txt) containing the string “Dark Project” with simultaneous file encryption events.
• Deploy endpoint detection rules that alert on registry modifications to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run that reference unknown executables in user profile directories.

Sigma Rules

title: Dark Project Ransomware File Extension Creation
id: 3f9c2a1e-5b4d-4e9a-9f2a-7c6d8e9b0a12
status: stable
description: Detect creation of files with extensions commonly used by Dark Project ransomware.
author: CYBERDUDEBIVASH Sentinel Apex
logsource:
    product: windows
    service: sysmon
detection:
    selection:
        EventID: 11
        ImageLoaded|endswith:
            - '.locked'
            - '.darkproject'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate backup software using custom extensions
level: high
tags:
    - attack.t1486
---
title: Dark Project Ransomware Ransom Note Detection
id: a1d4e6f9-2c3b-4a7d-9e5f-0b6c8d7e9f01
status: stable
description: Detect ransom note files containing the phrase "Dark Project".
author: CYBERDUDEBIVASH Sentinel Apex
logsource:
    product: windows
    service: sysmon
detection:
    selection:
        EventID: 11
        TargetFilename|contains: 'README'
        Contents|contains: 'Dark Project'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Internal documentation containing the phrase
level: high
tags:
    - attack.t1486

Threat Hunting Queries

• Hypothesis: Dark Project creates encrypted files with .locked extension – Source: Sysmon (EventID=11) – Query: `EventID=11 AND ImageLoaded LIKE "%.locked"`.
• Hypothesis: Ransom note contains “Dark Project” – Source: File monitoring – Query: `EventID=11 AND TargetFilename="*README*" AND Contents LIKE "%Dark Project%"`.
• Hypothesis: PowerShell archives large data sets before encryption – Source: Windows Security (EventID=4688) – Query: `EventID=4688 AND NewProcessName="*powershell.exe*" AND CommandLine LIKE "%Compress-Archive%" AND ProcessId IN (SELECT ProcessId FROM Event WHERE EventID=4688 AND CommandLine LIKE "%*%")`.
• Hypothesis: Outbound traffic to ransomware.live – Source: Proxy/DNS logs – Query: `dest_domain="ransomware.live"`.
• Hypothesis: Persistence via Run key pointing to unknown executable – Source: Registry monitoring – Query: `EventID=13 AND Hive="HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run" AND ValueData LIKE "%AppData%\\*"`.

SOC Analyst Playbook

• P0 – Immediate (0‑1 hr): Verify alert from Sigma rule; isolate affected endpoint; capture volatile memory and disk image.
• P0 – Immediate (0‑1 hr): Query Active Directory for recent credential changes on the compromised host.
• P1 – Urgent (1‑4 hr): Search for additional .locked/.darkproject files across the network share using file‑system scans.
• P1 – Urgent (1‑4 hr): Review proxy/DNS logs for connections to ransomware.live and block the domain.
• P2 – Same‑day (4‑24 hr): Conduct forensic analysis of the captured image to identify the ransomware binary hash and any C2 infrastructure.
• P2 – Same‑day (4‑24 hr): Initiate legal notification workflow per state breach statutes.

Executive Decision Matrix

Executive Recommendations

• Day 1‑7: Isolate compromised systems, block ransomware.live, deploy Sigma rules, and begin

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