Rise in hypervisor ransomware incidents
Cybersecurity experts from Huntress have noticed a sharp rise in ransomware incidents on hypervisors and have asked users to be safe and have proper back-up.
The Huntress case data has disclosed a surprising increase in hypervisor ransomware. It was involved in malicious encryption and rose from a mere three percent in the first half to a staggering 25 percent in 2025.
Akira gang responsible
Experts think that the Akira ransomware gang is the primary threat actor behind this, other players are also going after hypervisors to escape endpoint and network security controls. According to Huntress threat hunters, players are going after hypervisors as they are not secure and hacking them can allow hackers to trigger virtual machines and manage networks.
Why hypervisors?
“This shift underscores a growing and uncomfortable trend: Attackers are targeting the infrastructure that controls all hosts, and with access to the hypervisor, adversaries dramatically amplify the impact of their intrusion," experts said. The attack tactic follows classic playbook. Researchers have "seen it with attacks on VPN appliances: Threat actors realize that the host operating system is often proprietary or restricted, meaning defenders cannot install critical security controls like EDR [Endpoint Detection and Response]. This creates a significant blind spot.”
Other instances
The experts have also found various cases where ransomware actors install ransomware payloads directly via hypervisors, escaping endpoint security. In a few cases, threat actors used built-in-tools like OpenSSL to run encryption of the virtual machine volume without having to upload custom ransomware binaries.
Attack tactic
Huntress researchers have also found attackers disrupting a network to steal login credentials and then attack hypervisors.
“We’ve seen misuse of Hyper-V management utilities to modify VM settings and undermine security features,” they add. “This includes disabling endpoint defenses, tampering with virtual switches, and preparing VMs for ransomware deployment at scale," they said.
Mitigation strategies
Due to the high level of attacks on hypervisors, experts have suggested admins to revisit infosec basics such as multi-factor authentication and password patch updates. Admins should also adopt hypervisor-specific safety measures like only allow-listed binaries can run on a host.
For decades, the Infosec community has known hypervisors to be an easy target. In a worst-case scenario of a successful VM evasion where an attack on a guest virtual machine allows hijacking of the host and its hypervisor, things can go further south. If this were to happen, the impact could be massive as the entire hyperscale clouds depend on hypervisors to isolate tenants' virtual systems.
