A Linux variant of the HelloKitty ransomware was employed in attacks against VMware ESXi systems.
The move of the ransomware gang aims at expanding the operations targeting enterprises that are largely adopting virtualizing platforms. Targeting VMware ESXi systems, threat actors could encrypt as many virtual machines as possible with a significant impact on the victims.
Researchers from MalwareHunterTeam spotted multiple Linux ELF64 versions of the HelloKitty ransomware designed to target VMware ESXi servers and encrypt virtual machines hosted on them.
