Earlier this week, a Ukrainian security researcher leaked almost two years’ worth of internal chat logs from Conti, one of the more rapacious and ruthless ransomware gangs in operation today. Tuesday’s story examined how Conti dealt with its own internal breaches and attacks from private security firms and governments. In Part II of this series we’ll explore what it’s like to work for Conti, as described by the Conti employees themselves.
The Conti group’s chats reveal a great deal about its internal structure and hierarchy. Conti maintains many of the same business units as a legitimate, small- to medium-sized enterprise, including a Human Resources department that is in charge of constantly interviewing potential new hires.
Other Conti departments with their own distinct budgets, staff schedules, and senior leadership include:
–Coders: Programmers hired to write malicious code, integrate disparate technologies
–Testers: Workers in charge of testing Conti malware against security tools and obfuscating it
–Administrators: Workers tasked with setting up, tearing down servers, other attack infrastructure
–Reverse Engineers: Those who can disassemble computer code, study it, find vulnerabilities or weaknesses
–Penetration Testers/Hackers: Those on the front lines battling against corporate security teams to steal data, and plant ransomware.
Conti appears to have contracted out much of its spamming operations, or at least there was no mention of “Spammers” as direct employees. Conti’s leaders seem to have set strict budgets for each of its organizational units, although it occasionally borrowed funds allocated for one department to address the pressing cashflow needs of another.
A great many of the more revealing chats concerning Conti’s structure are between “Mango” — a mid-level Conti manager to whom many other Conti employees ..
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