In early December, GoldenEye ransomware  (detected by Trend Micro as RANSOM_GOLDENEYE.A) was observed targeting German-speaking users—particularly those belonging to the human resource department. GoldenEye, a relabeled version of the Petya (RANSOM_PETYA) and Mischa (RANSOM_MISCHA) ransomware combo, not only kept to the James Bond theme of its earlier iteration, but also its attack vector.

Given ransomware’s likely outlook to reach a plateau, persistence in the threat landscape and diversification of target victims are the names of the game. GoldenEye exemplifies bad guys trying to gain scale, leverage, and profit with rehashed malware.