Conti Ransomware Group

Conti, the successor to Ryuk, became one of the most notorious ransomware groups due to large, coordinated campaigns and a mature affiliate program. The operation used a Ransomware as a Service model to scale quickly, enabling high profile attacks in 2022 against organizations such as Panasonic, Bank Indonesia, and Meyer. Conti popularized triple extortion, which adds two pressure points to classic encryption. Victims face data theft and public shaming on leak sites, and the group also threatens to sell network access or leak sensitive records if payment is refused. This playbook increases leverage during negotiations and drives faster decisions by impacted organizations.

Conti affiliates typically gained initial access through phishing, exploitation of internet facing services, stolen credentials purchased from initial access brokers, or delivery via loader families such as TrickBot and BazarLoader. Once inside, operators performed discovery, moved laterally, and escalated privileges using common administrative tools and Cobalt Strike beacons. Backups and shadow copies were removed, domain controllers were targeted, and large volumes of data were staged for exfiltration before encryption began. The Conti leaks, a trove of internal chat logs and playbooks, provided rare visibility into the group’s processes, tooling, and negotiation tactics. Organizations can reduce risk by enforcing multifactor authentication, rapidly patching exposed services, segmenting critical systems, maintaining tested offline backups, monitoring for data exfiltration, and continuously validating detection and response controls against real adversary techniques used by Conti and its successors.

Metadata

Associated Groups	Successor of the Ryuk Ransomware Group Aliases - Grim Spider, Wizard Spider
Associated Country	Russia
Target Sectors	Healthcare, Insurance, Manufacturing, Technology, Telecommunications, Retail
Target Countries	United States, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Taiwan

Modus Operandi

Business Models	Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Multiple Extortion
Extortion Tactics	File Encryption Data Leakage Selling Access
Initial Access Methods	Exploit Public-Facing Application Phishing External Remote Services
Impact Methods	Data Encryption Data Exfiltration

Exploited Applications and Vulnerabilities by Conti

Application	Vulnerability	CVE	CVSS
Microsoft Exchange	ProxyShell RCE	CVE-2021-34473	9.8 Critical

Utilized Tools and Malware by Conti