Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (EXE1786436694)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Exelasis's Ransomware and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts Exelasis Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Exelasis breach identified under incident ID EXE1786436694.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Exelasis's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exelasis-ltd, the number of followers: 14000, the industry type: Computer and Network Security and the number of employees: 5 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 748 and after the incident was 634 with a difference of -114 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Exelasis and their customers.
On 01 July 2025, a cybersecurity incident called "DeadLock Ransomware Attack" came to light.
DeadLock is a financially motivated ransomware operation employing double extortion, encrypting enterprise data while threatening to leak stolen files.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Windows systems, databases, VMs, backups, Active Directory, and exposing Enterprise data encrypted and exfiltrated.
In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Disabling security tools, killing processes, clearing event logs, and stakeholders are being briefed through Local HTML recovery chat with decentralized communication (Session, Polygon smart contracts).
The case underscores how Ongoing (as of July 2026), teams are taking away lessons such as Decentralized infrastructure complicates takedown efforts; aggressive anti-forensic measures hinder detection and recovery, and recommending next steps like Enhance monitoring for privilege escalation attempts, Implement network segmentation to limit lateral movement and Deploy behavioral WAF and on-demand scrubbing services.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating initial access via affiliates (Lynx/INC ecosystems) and Trusted Relationship (T1199) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating affiliate-driven access model rather than a single organized crew. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating deadLock malware, written in Rust, begins by XOR-decoding an embedded configuration and Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell (T1059.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating forces UAC prompts via ShellExecuteW to gain administrative privileges. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating enables high-level privileges (SeDebugPrivilege, SeBackupPrivilege, SeRestorePrivilege) and Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Bypass User Account Control (T1548.002) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating forces UAC prompts via ShellExecuteW to gain administrative privileges. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating disables Windows Defender, VSS, Hyper-V, Active Directory, backup software, Impair Defenses: Disable Windows Event Logging (T1562.002) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating clearing Windows Event Logs (Security, System, Application), Indicator Removal: Clear Windows Event Logs (T1070.001) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating clearing Windows Event Logs (Security, System, Application), Data Destruction (T1485) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating emptying Recycle Bins and disabling recovery mechanisms, and Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories (T1564.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating registering a custom .dlock file extension with a unique icon. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified OS Credential Dumping (T1003) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating enables SeDebugPrivilege, SeBackupPrivilege, SeRestorePrivilege. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified System Information Discovery (T1082) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating checks system language settings before execution and Process Discovery (T1057) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating kills processes (MsMpEng, PowerShell, Task Manager, cloud-sync clients). Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol (T1021.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating kills remote-access tools during execution. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating enterprise data encrypted and exfiltrated. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Web Service (T1102) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating communications routed through Session’s onion-routed network and Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating local HTML recovery chat connects to Polygon smart contracts. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating data exfiltration to Wasabi’s S3-compatible storage and Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (T1567.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating stolen files hosted on Wasabi’s S3-compatible storage. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating xChaCha20 encryption with per-file Curve25519 ECDH keys and Inhibit System Recovery (T1490) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating disables VSS, backup software, and recovery mechanisms. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Exelasis Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/exelasis-ltd/incident/EXE1786436694
- Exelasis CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/exelasis-ltd
- Exelasis Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/exe1786436694-deadlock-ransomware-july-2025/
- Exelasis CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/exelasis-ltd/history
- Exelasis CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://gbhackers.com/deadlock-ransomware-attack/
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf