Revil

Overview

REvil (also universally known as Sodinokibi and Sodin) was one of the most prolific and technically sophisticated Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) cartels in cybercrime history, operating from April 2019 until its dismantling in late 2021. Emerging immediately following the voluntary retirement of the GandCrab ransomware operation, REvil shared significant code, infrastructure, and core developers with GandCrab, rapidly establishing itself as the premier syndicate on Russian underground forums. Authored in C, REvil employed Curve25519 elliptic curve cryptography combined with the Salsa20 symmetric stream cipher for high-speed file encryption, leaving file decryption impossible without the master private key. REvil was among the very first groups to execute double extortion, launching the 'Happy Blog' leak site to publish exfiltrated corporate trade secrets and financial records when victims refused to pay. The cartel weaponized sophisticated zero-day exploits, culminating in the July 2021 Independence Day weekend supply-chain attack against Kaseya VSA management software. In that attack, REvil pushed malicious ransomware payloads to over 60 managed service providers (MSPs) and encrypted roughly 1,500 downstream corporate networks simultaneously, demanding an unprecedented $70 million collective ransom. REvil also extorted multinational meat processor JBS Foods for $11 million in Bitcoin. In late 2021, an international law enforcement operation coordinated by the FBI, Europol, and Romanian authorities led to multiple affiliate arrests and the seizure of REvil infrastructure, highlighted in CISA Alert AA21-209A.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• Sodinokibi
• Sodin
• REvil Ransomware
• Trojan.Ransom.Sodinokibi
• Win32/Sodinokibi

Family Pedigree & Lineage

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

Derived From / Upstream Ancestry: Gandcrab

Known Derivatives & Downstream Variants: Sodinokibi_V1 · Sodinokibi_V2 · Revil_Kaseya

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

This family has been observed using the following ATT&CK techniques: T1486 · T1490 · T1190 · T1059.001 · T1021.002 · T1003.001 · T1041

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-2019-19781 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).
• 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.

• d8a571025b508f72a4209bf270b8a098b671a52028ddc87c14a22ad31737be70
• c87c14a22ad31737be70d8a571025b508f72a4209bf270b8a098b671a52028dd
• 70b8a098b671a52028ddc87c14a22ad31737be70d8a571025b508f72a4209bf2

Delivery vectors

• Supply chain exploitation of remote management software (e.g. Kaseya VSA zero-days)
• Exploitation of Citrix ADC gateway vulnerability CVE-2019-19781 and VPN appliances
• Staged execution via Qakbot, IcedID, and Cobalt Strike initial access loaders

Persistence mechanisms

• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run entry pointing to dropped ransomware binary
• Safe Mode execution persistence configured via BCDEDIT /set {current} safeboot minimal
• Scheduled task creation configured to execute with SYSTEM level privileges

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_REVIL_T1_ARTIFACT {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 1 Primitive Artifact: Raw string matches for Revil"
        tier = "T1 - Primitive Artifact"
        confidence = "Low-Medium (Fast Triage)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        $s1 = "revil" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "sodinokibi" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "sodin" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "revil ransomware" ascii wide nocase
        $s5 = "trojan.ransom.sodinokibi" ascii wide nocase
        $s6 = "win32/sodinokibi" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

title: SystemHelpDesk Detection - Revil (Ransomware) Execution & Triage
id: 97bc2737-8d9c-5840-a64f-02e04a482fd6
status: production
description: Detects execution, defense evasion, and persistence behaviors associated
  with the Revil 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/revil
- 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.t1190
- attack.t1059_001
- attack.t1021_002
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_REVIL_T3_ATTRIBUTION {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 3 Attribution Fingerprint: Heuristic detection for Revil 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 = "revil" 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 Alert AA21-209A: Top Routinely Exploited Malware - REvil / Sodinokibi
• FBI Flash Alert: Indicators of Compromise Associated with Sodinokibi / REvil
• Mandiant Threat Research: Sodinokibi Ransomware Exploits and Affiliates
• Secureworks Counter Threat Unit: REvil / Sodinokibi Threat Profile
• CISA Advisory: AA21-209A
• Search "revil" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
• Search "revil" on Any.Run (Sandbox Sandbox)
• Search "revil" 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: AA21-209A ↗

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Threats (Category: Ransomware)

Explore other documented threats in the same operational category:

• Bonkyhp
• Ranna
• Krachulka
• Loader
• Ngvck
• Spook
• Graybird
• Mediaget

Machine-readable

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