DarkSide (hacking group)

DarkSide is an Eastern Europe-based cybercriminal hacking group that targets victims using ransomware and extortion; it is believed to be behind the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack and the recent attack on a Toshiba unit. Darkside itself claims to be "apolitical" and that they do not participate in "geopolitics".
Targets.
DarkSide is believed to be based in Eastern Europe, likely Russia, but unlike other hacking groups responsible for high-profile cyberattacks it is not believed to be directly state-sponsored (i.e., operated by Russian intelligence services). DarkSide avoids targets in certain geographic locations by checking their system language settings. In addition to the languages of the 12 current, former or founding CIS countries the exclusion list contains Syrian Arabic. Experts state that the group is "one of the many for-profit ransomware groups that have proliferated and thrived in Russia" with at least the implicit sanction of the Russian authorities, who allow the activity to occur so long as it attacks foreign targets. The language check feature can be disabled when an instance of the ransomware is built. One such version was observed in May 2021. Additionally, DarkSide does not target healthcare centers, schools, and non-profit organizations.
Ransomware code used by DarkSide resembles ransomware software used by REvil, a different hacking group; REvil's code is not publicly available, suggesting that DarkSide is an offshoot of REvil or a partner of REvil. DarkSide and REvil use similarly structured ransom notes and the same code to check that the victim is not located in a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) country. 
According to Trend Micro Research data, the United States is by far DarkSide’s most targeted country, at more than 500 detections, followed by France, Belgium, and Canada. Of 25 countries observed by McAfee the most affected by DarkSide attacks (in terms of number of devices impacted per million devices) are Israel (1573.28), Malaysia (130.99), Belgium (106.93), Chile 
(103.97), Italy (95.91), Turkey (66.82), Austria (61.19), Ukraine (56.09), Peru (26.94), the U.S. (24.67).
Business model.
DarkSide uses intermediary hackers ("affiliates"). It uses "ransomware-as-a-service" — a model in which DarkSide grants its "affiliate" subscribers (who are screened via an interview) access to ransomware developed by DarkSide, in return for giving DarkSide a share of the ransom payments (apparently 25% for ransom payments under US$500,000 and 10% for ransom payments over US$5 million). Affiliates are given access to an administration panel on which they create builds for specific victims. The panel allows some degree of customization for each ransomware build. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant, a subsidiary of FireEye, has documented five clusters of threat activity that may represent different affiliates of the DarkSide RaaS platform, and has described three of them, referred to as UNC2628, UNC2659, and UNC2465.
History and attacks.
The group was first noticed in August 2020. Cybersecurity company Kaspersky described the group as an "enterprise" due to its professional-looking website and attempts to partner with journalists and decryption companies. The group has sought to foster a "Robin Hood" image, claiming that they donated some of their ransom proceeds to charity. The group "has publicly stated that they prefer to target organizations that can afford to pay large ransoms instead of hospitals, schools, non-profits, and governments."
Ransoms demanded by the group range from US$200,000 to US$2 million. From December 2020 to May 2021, DarkSide attacked U.S. oil and gas infrastructure on four occasions. DarkSide ransomware hit the IT managed services provider CompuCom in March 2021, costing over US$20 million in restoration expenses; it also attacked Canadian Discount Car and Truck Rentals and Toshiba Tec Corp., a unit of Toshiba Corp. DarkSide extorted money from the German company Brenntag. The cryptocurrency security firm Elliptic stated that a Bitcoin wallet opened by DarkSide in March 2021 had received US$17.5 million from 21 Bitcoin wallets (including the Colonial Pipeline ransom), indicating the number of ransoms received over the course of a few months. Elliptic's analysis showed that in total, Darkside received over $90 million in ransom payments from at least 47 victims. The average ransom payment was $1.9 million.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified DarkSide as the perpetrator of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, a cyberattack on May 7, 2021, perpetrated by malicious code, that led to a voluntary shutdown of the main pipeline supplying 45% of fuel to the East Coast of the United States. The attack was described as the worst cyberattack to date on U.S. critical infrastructure. DarkSide successfully extorted about 75 Bitcoin (almost US$5 million) from Colonial Pipeline. U.S. officials are investigating whether the attack was purely criminal or took place with the involvement of the Russian government or another state sponsor. Following the attack, DarkSide posted a statement claiming that "We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics...Our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society." 
In May 2021, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint alert urging the owners and operators of critical infrastructure to take certain steps to reduce their vulnerability to DarkSide ransomware and ransomware in general.
On May 14, 2021, in a Russian-language statement obtained by the cybersecurity firms FireEye and Intel 471 and reported by the "Wall Street Journal" and "The New York Times", DarkSide said that "due to the pressure from the U.S." it was shutting down operations, closing the gang's "affiliate program" (the intermediary hackers that DarkSide works with to hack). The specific "pressure" referred to was not clear, but the preceding day, U.S. President Joe Biden suggested that the U.S. would take action against DarkSide to "disrupt their ability to operate." DarkSide claimed that it had lost access to its payment server, blog, and funds withdrawn to an unspecified account. Cybersecurity experts cautioned that DarkSide's claim to have disbanded might be a ruse to deflect scrutiny, and possibly allow the gang to resume hacking activities under a different name. It is common for cybercriminal networks to shut down, revive, and rebrand in this way.