Some of the indicators we’ve observed being shared by both Nokoyawa and Hive include the use of Cobalt Strike as part of the arrival phase of the attack, as well as the use of legitimate, but commonly abused, tools such as the anti-rootkit scanners GMER and PC Hunter for defense evasion.
Other steps, such as information gathering and lateral deployment, are also similar.
The operators of the Hive ransomware are known to use other tools – such as NirSoft and MalXMR miner – to enhance their attack capabilities depending on the victim environment.
Based on our analysis, Nokoyawa also does the same thing based on its victims.
We’ve observed the ransomware leverage other tools such as Mimikatz, Z0Miner, and Boxter.
Trend Micro also found evidence based on one of the IP addresses used by Nokoyawa that the two ransomware families share the same infrastructure.