The Impact of Conti Ransomware on a Modern Virtualized Environment

Gentili, Alessandro (2022) The Impact of Conti Ransomware on a Modern Virtualized Environment. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

The recent attack on the Irish Health Service Executive (H.S.E.) system by the Conti ransomware has underlined the danger of this kind of threat in the international panorama. Unfortunately, technical knowledge about the Conti ransomware and the overall understanding of how this group operates is still in part unknown. As such, there is an opportunity to increase knowledge in this area, especially from an academic point of view. In order to study the Conti ransomware safely, one main requirement is to have the virtual laboratory as secure as possible. Therefore, it has been designed with all CIA principles. In addition, the researcher can benefit from the VPN and the Tor network to achieve anonymity, hidden geolocation, and data encryption. The overall implementation uses virtualization technology and automation. The experiments have been performed with static and dynamic analysis to check both source code and behavioral aspects. The findings show that the virtual lab is safe for experimenting without fear of being tracked back. The results also show that the impact of the Conti ransomware varies if this is carried out online or offline. In addition, a minimum layer of security can stop Ransomware from spreading through the network. Other researchers can reuse the proposed architecture and the conclusions to study the impact of the Conti ransomware and its variants for future experiments.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Conti ransomware; Virtualized Environment
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Computer Security
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Cyber Security
Depositing User:	Tamara Malone
Date Deposited:	19 Dec 2022 16:10
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2022 16:10
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/6003

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