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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Check Point Research reported Rorschach ransomware on April 4, 2023, after its incident-response team encountered it at a US-based company. The analyzed Windows sample could spread through a domain by using Group Policy when run on a Domain Controller. In Check Point’s controlled test, it encrypted 220,000 local-drive files in an average of about 4 minutes 30 seconds. Those findings describe one observed incident and specific test conditions—not the ransomware’s current prevalence or performance on every system.
What Rorschach ransomware is
Rorschach is the name Check Point Research gave to a previously unnamed ransomware strain encountered by its Incident Response Team in an incident involving a US-based company. Its April 4, 2023 analysis described a Windows ransomware sample with a partly autonomous deployment process and a file-encryption routine. The analyzed sample had no branding, and the researchers said they found no clear overlaps that were sufficient to attribute it to a known ransomware strain.
The report documents what the researchers observed in that incident and in their analysis of the sample. It does not establish how many victims Rorschach has had, whether it remains active, or whether its operators have since been identified.
How the analyzed sample was launched and spread
Abusing a signed tool to load the payload
In the reported launch chain, attackers used cy.exe, identified as the Cortex XDR Dump Service Tool version 7.3.0.16740, to side-load winutils.dll. That DLL acted as a packed loader and injector. It loaded the encrypted payload and configuration from config.ini, decrypted them, and injected the ransomware into notepad.exe.
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This was abuse of a legitimate signed component, not evidence that the Cortex XDR tool itself was malicious. Check Point said it reported the vulnerability involved in the abuse to Palo Alto Networks.
Using Group Policy from a Domain Controller
The sample’s reported self-propagation depended on where it was run: when run on a Windows Domain Controller, it copied files into the Domain Controller’s scripts folder and created Group Policy objects to copy files to domain workstations. It also registered a scheduled task to run the ransomware immediately and again at user logon. The analysis describes a capability under those documented conditions; it does not establish that every infection uses this method or that the sample spreads automatically from any ordinary workstation.
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What Rorschach did before and during encryption
Attempts to impair recovery and defenses
Researchers documented attempts to stop selected services, delete shadow volumes and backups using Windows tools, clear the Application, Security, System, and Windows PowerShell event logs, and disable the Windows firewall. The sample also attempted to kill selected processes through a scheduled task.
Its evasion techniques included falsified process arguments, packing and virtualization protections, and direct system calls intended to avoid monitoring that relies on ordinary API calls. These are behaviors observed in the analyzed sample, not a checklist that can identify every Rorschach incident on its own.
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Hybrid encryption and selected file portions
The analysis describes a hybrid encryption scheme combining Curve25519 with the HC-128 cipher. Rather than necessarily encrypting every byte of every file, the sample encrypted selected portions. A generated per-victim private key and a hardcoded public key contributed to key derivation.
How fast was Rorschach in Check Point’s test?
Check Point ran five controlled tests, limiting the comparison to local-drive encryption. The setup used six CPUs, 8,192 MB of RAM, an SSD, and a dataset of 220,000 files. The approximate average times reported were:
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| Ransomware | Approximate average encryption time |
|---|---|
| Rorschach | 4 minutes 30 seconds |
| LockBit v.3 | 7 minutes |
These are Check Point’s results under that test setup, not a guarantee of how long encryption would take on different hardware, file sets, or storage. The comparison also does not measure encryption over network shares: the reported tests were limited to local drives.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Who was behind Rorschach?
Check Point’s April 4, 2023 report did not identify the operators or developers. The researchers described code and feature similarities to Babuk and LockBit, but said they found no clear overlaps that established attribution to a known group. Similarities are clues about possible borrowing, not proof of who created or deployed the ransomware.
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The ransom note is not reliable proof of identity either. The report noted that variants’ notes resembled those associated with Yanluowang or DarkSide. In their 2023 report, authors Jiri Vinopal, Dennis Yarizadeh, and Gil Gekker concluded that the operators and developers remained unknown; that statement records the attribution status of their analysis, not necessarily the status today.
What defenders can take from the reported behavior
The documented actions point to several practical areas for monitoring and preparation. These are defensive inferences from the report, not guarantees that any one control will prevent an infection.
- Protect Domain Controllers and Group Policy administration. Monitor for unusual policy creation, changes to the Domain Controller’s scripts folder, and unexpected policy-based file deployment to workstations.
- Investigate scheduled-task activity. Look for unexpected task creation or changes that launch unfamiliar executables immediately or at user logon.
- Watch for unusual signed-tool and DLL behavior. A trusted executable loading an unexpected DLL can warrant investigation; the legitimate executable alone does not establish that an incident is malicious.
- Keep backups recoverable. The sample attempted to delete shadow volumes and backups, so protect recovery copies from systems and accounts that could be compromised alongside production machines.
- Review signs of defense impairment. Unexpected service stops, firewall changes, attempts to clear Windows event logs, and changes to shadow copies can be useful signals when considered together with other evidence.
Check Point also reported that its Harmony Endpoint detected the ransomware during its own test. That is the vendor’s account of its product’s result, not an independent comparison of endpoint-security products.
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