hacker-news Aug 11, 2026 · Crawled Aug 11, 2026

DeadLock Ransomware Uses Polygon Smart Contracts to Make Extortion Infra Harder to Disrupt

4 IoCs 2 Malware

AI Summary

The DeadLock ransomware group has adopted a resilient, decentralized infrastructure leveraging Polygon blockchain smart contracts to manage victim communications and data leak operations, making takedown efforts more difficult. The ransomware encrypts files with the '.dlock' extension, uses hybrid encryption (Curve25519 and XChaCha20), and drops an HTML-based interactive recovery note (RECOVERY_CHAT.<UID>.html) that enables end-to-end encrypted chat and access to a blockchain-hosted data leak blog. The HTML note retrieves proxy server addresses via JavaScript interacting with Polygon smart contracts, allowing for censorship-resistant communication. The attackers also use geofencing to avoid certain regions, employ resource throttling, erase logs, and leverage AnyDesk for remote access.

AI-extracted · verify before operational use

Extracted Entities 2 found

Malware Lynx → Malware INC →

Indicators of Compromise 4 extracted

Type	Value	Detail
IP	138[.]226[.]236[.]51	Details →
Domain	138[.]226[.]236[.]51/prrq[.]php	Details →
Filename	RECOVERY_CHAT.<UID>.html	Details →
SHA-256	not specified	Details →

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs 45 techniques

T1014 Rootkit · Defense Evasion T1020 Automated Exfiltration · Exfiltration T1021.001 Remote Desktop Protocol · Lateral Movement T1021.006 Windows Remote Management · Lateral Movement T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information · Defense Evasion T1040 Network Sniffing · Credential Access T1056.001 Keylogging · Collection T1070.001 Clear Windows Event Logs · Defense Evasion T1071.001 Web Protocols · Command And Control T1075 T1075 T1078.002 Domain Accounts · Defense Evasion T1081 T1081 T1083 File and Directory Discovery · Discovery T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer · Command And Control T1110.003 Password Spraying · Credential Access T1213 Data from Information Repositories · Collection T1485 Data Destruction · Impact T1486 Data Encrypted for Impact · Impact T1490 Inhibit System Recovery · Impact T1491.001 Internal Defacement · Impact T1531 Account Access Removal · Impact T1558 Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets · Credential Access T1566 Phishing · Initial Access T1003.008 /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow · Credential Access T1021 Remote Services · Lateral Movement T1021.002 SMB/Windows Admin Shares · Lateral Movement T1055 Process Injection · Defense Evasion T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter · Execution T1059.001 PowerShell · Execution T1071 Application Layer Protocol · Command And Control T1078 Valid Accounts · Defense Evasion T1080 Taint Shared Content · Lateral Movement T1087.002 Domain Account · Discovery T1090 Proxy · Command And Control T1133 External Remote Services · Persistence T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution · Execution T1212 Exploitation for Credential Access · Credential Access T1484.001 Group Policy Modification · Defense Evasion T1542.001 System Firmware · Persistence T1543.003 Windows Service · Persistence T1548.002 Bypass User Account Control · Privilege Escalation T1552.001 Credentials In Files · Credential Access T1552.004 Private Keys · Credential Access T1574.002 DLL Side-Loading · Persistence T1588.001 Malware · Resource Development