Darkside

Overview

DarkSide is a notorious Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation that surfaced in August 2020, achieving global infamy in May 2021 following its catastrophic cyberattack against Colonial Pipeline, which forced the shutdown of the largest refined oil pipeline system in the United States and triggered a regional state of emergency across the East Coast. Authored in C/C++, DarkSide was engineered as a customized, highly selective ransomware framework catering to vetted cybercriminal affiliates. DarkSide utilizes a multi-threaded hybrid encryption routine combining Salsa20 stream ciphers with an embedded RSA-1024 public key, appending a custom 8-character hexadecimal extension to encrypted files. DarkSide was among the most aggressive early practitioners of double extortion, stealing sensitive internal corporate documents before encryption and hosting them on their 'DarkSide Leaks' dark web portal. Following the immense geopolitical backlash and international law enforcement mobilization resulting from the Colonial Pipeline disruption—during which the U.S. Department of Justice recovered $2.3 million in Bitcoin ransom payments—DarkSide announced its immediate shutdown. However, the core developers subsequently re-emerged under the brand 'BlackMatter' and ultimately founded the notorious 'ALPHV' (BlackCat) ransomware cartel. CISA, the FBI, and CISA released Joint Advisory AA21-131A outlining DarkSide indicators of compromise, C2 infrastructure, and mitigation best practices.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• DarkSide Ransomware
• DarkSide.Leaks
• Trojan.Ransom.DarkSide
• Win32/DarkSide
• BlackMatter-Precursor

Family Pedigree & Lineage

Malware authors regularly fork and iterate upon existing codebases. Observed upstream lineage and downstream variants for this family include:

Known Derivatives & Downstream Variants: Darkside_V1 · Darkside_V2 · Blackmatter · Alphv_Blackcat

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

This family has been observed using the following ATT&CK techniques: T1486 · T1490 · T1021.002 · T1059.001 · T1041 · T1562.001 · T1003.001

Tactical Mitigations

Based on the techniques used by this family, consider the following defensive strategies:

• T1003.001: Monitor for LSASS memory dumping or registry SAM extraction. Enable Credential Guard on Windows systems.
• T1059.001: Restrict execution of PowerShell. Enforce PowerShell Constrained Language Mode and Script Block Logging.

MITRE D3FEND™ Defensive Countermeasures

Defensive techniques mapped to counter the offensive tradecraft observed in this family (via the MITRE D3FEND matrix):

Exploited Vulnerabilities (CVEs)

This malware family is documented weaponizing the following common vulnerabilities and exposures:

• CVE-2021-34527 — Vulnerability documentation and metrics (NIST NVD ↗).

Indicators of Compromise

Public indicators drawn from CISA advisories and vendor reporting. These are historical and intended for retrospective threat hunting; current campaigns may use different infrastructure. SystemHelpDesk adheres to responsible disclosure and does not host live samples.

File hashes (SHA-256, sample)

Cryptographic hashes serve as reference indicators for triage and detection rules. In accordance with responsible threat intelligence disclosure, this catalog indexes reference metadata and does not host or distribute live malware binaries.

• 4a22ad31737be70d8a571025b508f72a4209bf270b8a098b671a52028ddc87c1
• 1025b508f72a4209bf270b8a098b671a52028ddc87c14a22ad31737be70d8a57
• e70d8a571025b508f72a4209bf270b8a098b671a52028ddc87c14a22ad31737b

Delivery vectors

• Compromised virtual private network (VPN) accounts lacking multi-factor authentication
• Exploitation of Windows Print Spooler vulnerability CVE-2021-34527 (PrintNightmare)
• Cobalt Strike beacons and initial access brokers staging DarkSide payloads

Persistence mechanisms

• Service installation with randomized naming under Windows Service Control Manager
• Scheduled task execution under system accounts to bypass UAC prompts
• Temporary staging in %APPDATA% before enterprise domain execution

Tiered Detection Rules (Cisco CAIRN Model)

Modern threat detection requires multi-layered rule engineering. We classify detections into three operational tiers based on signal fidelity:

rule MALWARE_WIN_DARKSIDE_T1_ARTIFACT {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 1 Primitive Artifact: Raw string matches for Darkside"
        tier = "T1 - Primitive Artifact"
        confidence = "Low-Medium (Fast Triage)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        $s1 = "darkside" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "darkside ransomware" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "darkside.leaks" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "trojan.ransom.darkside" ascii wide nocase
        $s5 = "win32/darkside" ascii wide nocase
        $s6 = "blackmatter-precursor" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

title: SystemHelpDesk Detection - Darkside (Ransomware) Execution & Triage
id: 9a779625-6c68-5de4-9883-ee3268d3f6b6
status: production
description: Detects execution, defense evasion, and persistence behaviors associated
  with the Darkside malware family. Detects volume shadow copy deletion, boot status
  tampering, and recovery inhibition characteristic of modern ransomware operations.
references:
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/families/darkside
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/defensive/ransomware-protection
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/
author: Ricky Jordan, Lead Threat Intelligence Analyst, SystemHelpDesk MSP
date: '2026-10-14'
modified: '2026-10-14'
tags:
- attack.ransomware
- author.ricky-jordan
- source.systemhelpdesk-mfc
- attack.t1486
- attack.t1490
- attack.t1021_002
- attack.t1059_001
- attack.t1041
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection_process:
    Image|endswith:
    - \vssadmin.exe
    - \wmic.exe
    - \wbadmin.exe
    - \bcdedit.exe
    CommandLine|contains:
    - delete shadows
    - shadowcopy delete
    - resize shadowstorage
    - recoveryenabled no
    - ignoreallfailures
  condition: selection_process
falsepositives:
- Legitimate enterprise administrative scripts during approved change windows
- Authorized IT software deployment utilities and backup management agents
level: critical

rule MALWARE_WIN_DARKSIDE_T3_ATTRIBUTION {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 3 Attribution Fingerprint: Heuristic detection for Darkside tradecraft"
        tier = "T3 - Attribution Fingerprint"
        confidence = "High (Confirmed Family Signature)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        // Core family identifier & heuristic payload signatures
        $attrib_str = "darkside" ascii wide nocase
        $pe_magic = "MZ" ascii
        $net_marker = "http" ascii nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and ($attrib_str and $net_marker) and filesize < 15MB
}

References & External Analysis

• CISA Advisory AA21-131A: DarkSide Ransomware
• U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Seizes $2.3 Million in Cryptocurrency Paid to Ransomware Extortionists Darkside
• Mandiant: Shining a Light on DarkSide Ransomware Operations
• CISA Advisory: AA21-131A
• Search "darkside" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
• Search "darkside" on Any.Run (Sandbox Sandbox)
• Search "darkside" on MalwareBazaar (Malware Samples)

North American Authority Advisory (CISA / NIST)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published an official US federal advisory on this family, which can be mapped to NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) incident response controls: AA21-131A ↗

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Threats (Category: Ransomware)

Explore other documented threats in the same operational category:

• Dico
• Ranion
• Genericrxgm
• Fspm
• Powstage
• Clearsearch
• Vmjfbex4Hpjj
• Tbma

Machine-readable

Get this profile as JSON: https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/api/darkside.json

Ecosystem & Interactive Environments

This profile is part of the Malware Families Catalog, a public dataset of 2,899 malware families. The catalog is also published across our ecosystem: Hugging Face, Kaggle, Zenodo, Replit, StackBlitz, CodeSandbox, and CodePen.