Cheerscrypt has leveraged esxcli in order to terminate running virtual machines.3
tool
Cheerscrypt S1096
- Type
- malware
- Platforms
- Windows, ESXi
- Created
- 18 December 2023
- Last modified
- 15 April 2025
Cheerscrypt is a ransomware that was developed by Cinnamon Tempest and has been used in attacks against ESXi and Windows environments since at least 2022. Cheerscrypt was derived from the leaked Babuk source code and has infrastructure overlaps with deployments of Night Sky ransomware, which was also derived from Babuk.[1][2]
5
TechniquesBottom 23%
3
TacticsBottom 21%
1
Threat groupunranked
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
MITRE reference S1096
Cheerscrypt can search for log and VMware-related files with .log, .vmdk, .vmem, .vswp, and .vmsn extensions.4
Cheerscrypt can encrypt data on victim machines using a Sosemanuk stream cipher with an Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) generated key.56
Cheerscrypt has the ability to terminate VM processes on compromised hosts through execution of esxcli vm process kill.7
Cheerscrypt has leveraged esxcli vm process list in order to gather a list of running virtual machines to terminate them.8
Standing S1096
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this tool touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 825 ATT&CK software entries only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.
Reach
Techniques5Bottom 23%
23rd percentile · 77% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics3Bottom 21%
21st percentile · 79% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more tactics spanned.
Threat group161% tie · 22 values
61% of the population shares a single value across only 22 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Campaigns085% tie · 8 values
85% of the population shares a single value across only 8 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique27med68th pct
68th percentile · 68% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique8med
Detection coverage S1096
103 distinct rules cover the 5 techniques recorded for this tool. The 104 technique-to-rule mappings resolve to 103 distinct rules, because one rule can cover several techniques. 70 Sigma · 33 Splunk.
5 covered by at least one rule103 distinct rules in total
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