Akira ransomware: From SonicWall VPN login to encryption in under four hours Four hours or less: that’s how long it takes for Akira affiliates to break into organizations and deploy the ransomware on their systems, Arctic Wolf researchers have warned. Armed with SonicWall SSL VPN credentials stolen in earlier intrusions and apparently able to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), the attackers: Start to scan the network to discover network services and unsecured accounts Use Impacket to set up and interact with SMB sessions Use RDP for lateral movement through compromised environments Find their way to a Domain Controller and gain access to virtual machine storage and backups Create additional accounts (including domain accounts) to install RMM tools and for data exfiltration…