More than 500 hosts have been newly compromised en masse by the ESXiArgs ransomware strain, most of which are located in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., and Ukraine.
The findings come from attack surface management firm Censys, which discovered “two hosts with strikingly similar ransom notes dating back to mid-October 2022, just after ESXi versions 6.5 and 6.7 reached end of life.”
The first set of infections dates back to October 12, 2022, much earlier than when the campaign began to gain traction at the start of February 2023. Then on January 31, 2023, the ransom notes on the two hosts are said to have been updated with a revised version that matches the ones used in the current wave.
