Indian Asset Manager Breach: Morpheus Extortion Analysis

Technical Analysis of the Morpheus Ransomware and TransferLoader Delivery Chain

To defend against this modern adversary, security teams must understand the multi-stage attack chain and the sophisticated tools utilized in these operations. The campaigns, attributed to an active cybercriminal cluster tracked as UNK_GreenSec, leverage a specialized multi-stage loader named TransferLoader to establish initial footholds, move laterally, and execute the final ransomware payload.

The Scale and Impact of the Indian Asset Manager Compromise

IT administrators at a leading Indian asset management firm identified critical service failures within their on-premises VMware environment. Essential management systems, including administrative controls for VPN systems, SFTP servers, and endpoint antivirus interfaces, were systematically disabled or rendered inaccessible. Shortly thereafter, the organization received a communication from the Morpheus ransomware group demanding negotiations within a strict three-day window to prevent the public release of the exfiltrated corporate data.

The threat actor subsequently published a listing for the organization on its Tor-hosted leak site. The exfiltrated data, totaling approximately 680 GB, includes trading and portfolio records, investor personally identifiable information (PII), regulatory filings, human resources data, and internal accounting details. The potential exposure of investor PII and bank details raised immediate concerns regarding downstream financial fraud, specifically coordinated SIM-swap attacks targeting One-Time Passwords (OTPs) used to secure customer accounts.

In response to the escalating extortion attempt, the victim sought legal remedies. The Bombay High Court granted an ex parte interim injunction, ordering the Union Government of India to assist in mitigating the breach by blocking and disabling online accounts and Tor-based infrastructure used by the Morpheus group to distribute or trade the stolen datasets.

Stage 1: Initial Access and Redirect Evasion

The attack begins with targeted spearphishing campaigns containing malicious PDF attachments or links designed to mimic legitimate business correspondence. When a user interacts with these links, they are routed through dynamic redirection platforms, such as Rebrandly, to bypass basic email security filters. The victim is then directed to highly convincing, spoofed landing pages designed to look like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive interfaces. These malicious pages analyze the victim environment and deliver the primary TransferLoader downloader binary to human targets while actively filtering out automated security sandbox environments to avoid detection.

Stage 2: Persistent Infiltration and C2 Infrastructure

Once executed, the TransferLoader downloader retrieves an encrypted secondary payload via secure HTTPS channels, decrypts it in memory, and presents a decoy document to the user to maintain the illusion of legitimacy. Persistence is established through advanced evasion techniques, specifically Component Object Model (COM) hijacking. By modifying specific registry keys within the user registry hive (specifically under HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID), the malware ensures execution survival without placing indicators in standard Windows Startup registry keys.

Stage 3: Lateral Movement and Ransomware Execution

After establishing a persistent backdoor, the threat actors move laterally through the enterprise network, targeting administrative systems, SFTP storage, and hypervisor management consoles. In the incident at the leading Indian asset management firm, this deep network penetration enabled the actors to disable critical endpoint security management platforms and exfiltrate 680 GB of sensitive documents.

The final stage of the attack involves executing the Morpheus ransomware binary. The payload is a compact 18KB, 64-bit Windows Portable Executable (PE) that requires a specific, target-defined folder path as an input argument during execution. To ensure system stability while encryption takes place, the binary avoids system-critical folders such as System32, and skips standard system files like DLL, SYS, EXE, DRV, COM, and CAT files.

Significantly, the Morpheus payload employs a specialized evasion strategy: it does not alter file extensions or modify the metadata of targeted files during encryption. This silent file-content encryption is specifically engineered to bypass traditional Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents that rely heavily on monitoring mass file-renaming behavior to flag ransomware outbreaks.

The Rebranding Ecosystem of Morpheus RaaS

The Morpheus Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform, active since late 2024, operates as a specialized, semi-private extortion network. Security researchers have identified extensive codebase overlaps between Morpheus and other prominent ransomware groups. Analysis of both Morpheus and HellCat ransomware binaries reveals that they share an identical codebase, using the same native Windows Cryptographic API (BCrypt) for RSA and AES encryption key generation.

Aside from victim-specific Tor channels, ransom IDs, and contact configurations, the compiled binaries for Morpheus and HellCat are virtually indistinguishable. Additionally, both groups share core functions with malware variants tracked as AidLocker and Frag, indicating that multiple criminal brands utilize a single underlying ransomware builder engine. The ransom notes dropped by these groups also reuse templates from the historic Underground Team ransomware group, highlighting the continuous reuse of successful tools within the cybercriminal underground.

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and Technical Mapping

Security administrators can use the following technical indicators to identify potential TransferLoader and Morpheus activity within their enterprise environments:

• Morpheus Ransomware SHA-256 Hashes: 77962a384d251f0aa8e3008a88f206d6cb1f7401c759c4614e3bfe865e3e985c, 3928c5874249cc71b2d88e5c0c00989ac394238747bb7638897fc210531b4aab, 7fc65b23e0a85f548e4268b77b66a3c9f3d08b9c1817c99bc1336d51d36e1ec6

• TransferLoader Loader SHA-256 Hashes: b55ba0f869f6408674ee9c5229f261e06ad1572c52eaa23f5a10389616d62efe, 11d0b292ed6315c3bf47f5df4c7804edccbd0f6018777e530429cc7709ba6207, b8f00bd6cb8f004641ebc562e570685787f1851ecb53cd918bc6d08a1caae750

• Command and Control (C2) Addresses: https://mainstomp[.]cloud/MDcMkjAxsLKsT

• Morpheus Tor Onion Site: izsp6ipui4ctgxfugbgtu65kzefrucltyfpbxplmfybl5swiadpljmyd.onion

Actionable Detection and Containment Strategies

To mitigate the risk of Morpheus attacks, enterprises must implement robust threat hunting and detection logic. Because Morpheus avoids changing file extensions, standard file-renaming heuristics will fail to detect active encryption.

YARA Detection for Morpheus and TransferLoader

rule win_morpheus_auto {
    meta:
        author = "Felix Bilstein - yara-signator"
        description = "Detects win.morpheus ransomware samples"
    strings:
        $sequence_0 = { 8b 44 24 4c ff c0 89 44 24 4c eb c4 }
        $sequence_1 = { 8b 84 24 dc 01 00 00 8b 4c 24 2c 48 8b 94 24 28 04 00 00 48 8b 52 10 48 89 04 ca }
    condition:
        any of them
}

rule win_transferloader_auto {
    meta:
        author = "Felix Bilstein - yara-signator"
        description = "Detects win.transferloader loader binaries"
    strings:
        $loader_pipe = "\\\\.\\pipe\\" wide ascii
        $com_hijack  = "CLSID\\" wide ascii
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and ($loader_pipe and $com_hijack)
}

Enterprise Containment Steps

• EDR Behavioral Configuration: Configure Endpoint Detection and Response tools to monitor for unusual mass read-and-write operations occurring within short time windows, irrespective of file extension changes.

• COM Hijacking Audits: Periodically scan user registry hives under HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID for unknown or unauthorized class identifiers, which TransferLoader uses to establish persistence.

• Network and Hypervisor Segmentation: Isolate critical virtualized host environments and VMware administrative portals from general corporate subnets. Implement strict multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all administrative tools, prioritizing FIDO2 credentials to eliminate the threat of SIM-swapping.

• Ongoing Monitoring: Utilize professional Dark Web Monitoring to identify when leaked datasets or active discussions regarding enterprise assets emerge on underground forums, allowing teams to react before ransomware payloads are executed.