monkey/docs/content/usage/scenarios/ransomware-simulation.md

title	date	draft	description	weight	pre
Ransomware Simulation	2021-06-23T18:13:59+05:30	false	Simulate a ransomware attack on your network and assess the potential damage.	1	<i class='fa fa-lock'></i>

The Infection Monkey is capable of simulating a ransomware attack on your network using a set of configurable behaviors.

Encryption

In order to simulate the behavior of ransomware as accurately as possible, the Infection Monkey can encrypt user-specified files using a fully reversible algorithm. A number of mechanisms are in place to ensure that all actions performed by the encryption routine are safe for production environments.

Preparing your environment for a ransomware simulation

The Infection Monkey will only encrypt files that you allow it to. In order to take full advantage of the Infection Monkey's ransomware simulation, you'll need to provide the Infection Monkey with a directory that contains files that are safe for it to encrypt. The recommended approach is to use a remote administration tool, such as Ansible or PsExec to add a "ransomware target" directory to each machine in your environment. The Infection Monkey can then be configured to encrypt files in this directory.

Configuring encryption

To ensure minimum interference and easy recoverability, the ransomware simulation will only encrypt files contained in a user-specified directory. If no directory is specified, no files will be encrypted.

Infection Monkey appends the .m0nk3y file extension to files that it encrypts. You may optionally provide a custom file extension for Infection Monkey to use instead. You can even provide no file extension, but take caution: you'll no longer be able to tell if the file has been encrypted based on the filename alone!

How are the files encrypted?

Files are "encrypted" in place with a simple bit flip. Encrypted files are renamed to have a file extension (.m0nk3y by default) appended to their names. This is a safe way to simulate encryption since it is easy to "decrypt" your files. You can simply perform a bit flip on the files again and rename them to remove the appended .m0nk3y extension.

Flipping a file's bits is sufficient to simulate the encryption behavior of ransomware, as the data in your files has been manipulated (leaving them temporarily unusable). Files are then renamed with a new extension appended, which is similar to the way that many ransomwares behave. As this is a simulation, your security solutions should be triggered to notify you or prevent these changes from taking place.

Which files are encrypted?

During the ransomware simulation, attempts will be made to encrypt all regular files with targeted file extensions in the configured directory. The simulation is not recursive, i.e. it will not touch any files in sub-directories of the configured directory. The Infection Monkey will not follow any symlinks or shortcuts.

These precautions are taken to prevent the Infection Monkey from accidentally encrypting files that you didn't intend to encrypt.

Files targeted for encryption

Only regular files with certain extensions are encrypted by the ransomware simulation. This list is based on the analysis of the Goldeneye ransomware by BitDefender.

• .3ds
• .7z
• .accdb
• .ai
• .asp
• .aspx
• .avhd
• .avi
• .back
• .bak
• .c
• .cfg
• .conf
• .cpp
• .cs
• .ctl
• .dbf
• .disk
• .djvu
• .doc
• .docx
• .dwg
• .eml
• .fdb
• .giff
• .gz
• .h
• .hdd
• .jpg
• .jpeg
• .kdbx
• .mail
• .mdb
• .mpg
• .mpeg
• .msg
• .nrg
• .ora
• .ost
• .ova
• .ovf
• .pdf
• .php
• .pmf
• .png
• .ppt
• .pptx
• .pst
• .pvi
• .py
• .pyc
• .rar
• .rtf
• .sln
• .sql
• .tar
• .tiff
• .txt
• .vbox
• .vbs
• .vcb
• .vdi
• .vfd
• .vmc
• .vmdk
• .vmsd
• .vmx
• .vsdx
• .vsv
• .work
• .xls
• .xlsx
• .xvd
• .zip

Leaving a README.txt file

Many ransomware packages leave a README.txt file on the victim machine with an explanation of what has occurred and instructions for paying the attacker. The Infection Monkey will also leave a README.txt file in the target directory on the victim machine in order to replicate this behavior.

The README.txt file informs the user that a ransomware simulation has taken place and that they should contact their administrator. The contents of the file can be found here.