Ransomware now uses evasive and modular attack chains that require deep, behavior-based, and recursive analysis to be fully uncovered.
Despite law enforcement disruptions in 2025, the RaaS ecosystem hasproven its resilience. Ransomware attacks reached record levels in December 2025 and continue to accelerate into early 2026.
Attack Chain
Recursive Attack Chain
RMM → Payload
phishing
QR code
CAPTCHA
ClickFix
RMM
NetSupport
payload
Early indicators are linked before the final ransomware payload appears
4 of 5
World’s top tech giants
Modern ransomware uses multi-stage delivery chains, legitimate tools, and highly
evasive behavior to avoid detection until the final payload is deployed.
Modern ransomware uses multi-stage delivery chains, living-off-the-land techniques, abused legitimate tools, and evasive malware to avoid detection.
Attackers increasingly steal data before, alongside, or instead of encryption. Exfiltrated data may then be analyzed with LLMs to intensify blackmail efforts.
SOC teams often skip low-severity alerts, even though they may reveal stealthy activities. Distinguishing real threats from benign activity remains difficult.
Many tools focus on blocking threats quickly, but fail to expose the full infection chain, missing next-stage malware and associated IOCs.
VMRay analyzes alerts recursively, surfaces high-
confidence behavioral context, and extracts IOCs from
ongoing attacks.
VMRay analyzes all alerts to detect early signs of attacks that may evolve into ransomware, such as phishing campaigns leading to RMM deployment.
SOC analysts can focus on the alerts that matter by leveraging detailed behavioral insights and high-fidelity IOCs to make fast, informed decisions.
Runs static and dynamic analysis in an anti-evasion sandbox to ensure sophisticated malware is fully detonated and observed.
Recursive extraction of high-fidelity IOCs enables rapid detection and blocking of further ransomware activity.
VMRay identifies ransomware TTPs, detonates full attack chains recursively, and delivers clear verdicts and IOCs into existing SOC workflows.
VMRay identifies early signs of ransomware activity, such as lateral movement, living-off- the-land techniques, RMM deployment, credential theft, privilege escalation, and persistence.
By allowing the attack to run in an anti-evasion sandbox, VMRay automatically detonates and analyzes all stages of ransomware, including droppers and abused RMM tools, to identify attacker TTPs.
Analyze alerts recursively so low-severity ransomware indicators are not missed. Clear verdicts reach analysts in existing tools, while IOCs are shared with Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs).
Threat Identifiers
| Score | Category | Operation |
|---|---|---|
| 5/5 | User Data Modification | Appends new extensions to many filenames |
| 5/5 | User Data Modification | Modifies content of user files |
| 5/5 | User Data Modification | Renames user files |
| 4/5 | Defense Evasion | Modifies Windows Defender configuration |
| 3/5 | System Modification | Disables a crucial system service |
MITRE ATT&CK
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Defense Evasion
Impact
// Next step
VMRay analyzes alerts recursively, reconstructs multi-stage ransomware behavior, and delivers verdicts and IOCs to SOC and threat intelligence workflows.
reported
document
decoded
solved
clipboard
NetSupport
VMRay analyzes all alerts from EDR and SOAR to detect early signs of attacks that may evolve into ransomware.
The attack runs in an anti- evasion sandbox so droppers, abused RMM tools, and next- stage malware can be observed.
VMRay identifies lateral movement, living-off-the-land behavior, RMM deployment, credential theft, privilege escalation, & persistence.
Clear verdicts reach SOC analysts in existing tools, while IOCs from real-time attacks are shared with TIPs.
