samsam

SamSam was a financially-motivated ransomware operation that emerged in March 2016, targeting organizations primarily in the United States and Canada with a focus on critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, government, transportation, and education. The group was linked to Iranian threat actors, with the U.S. Department of Justice indicting two Iranian nationals in 2018 for operating the SamSam ransomware scheme, which was believed to be state-sponsored or state-tolerated cybercriminal activity rather than operating as a traditional Ransomware-as-a-Service model. SamSam operators employed a targeted approach, gaining initial access through brute force attacks against Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) services and JBoss application servers, then conducting extensive network reconnaissance before deploying their custom ransomware to encrypt multiple systems simultaneously across the victim's network. The group was responsible for several high-profile attacks, including strikes against the City of Atlanta in 2018 and multiple healthcare organizations, with the FBI estimating the group collected over $6 million in ransom payments and caused over $30 million in damages to victims between 2016 and 2018. Following the 2018 indictments and increased law enforcement pressure, SamSam operations significantly diminished, with the group becoming largely inactive by late 2018.