Ransomware Incident Response for a Tier-1 Aviation Operator — Contained in 6 Hours
From alert to containment in 6 hours with full forensic analysis confirming zero data exfiltration
Client: International Airline
The Challenge
Ransomware Detected on a Friday Evening — Passenger Systems at Risk
An international airline detected ransomware encryption activity on their corporate network at 9 PM on a Friday. The malware had already encrypted 340 endpoints and was spreading laterally toward the reservation and flight operations systems. The airline had no internal incident response capability and needed immediate expert containment to prevent operational disruption that could ground flights.
- Active ransomware encryption spreading across corporate network — 340 endpoints already affected
- Lateral movement toward reservation system and flight operations infrastructure
- No internal incident response team or pre-established IR retainer
- Friday evening — airline operations running 24/7 with no maintenance window available
The Solution
Emergency Incident Response: Contain, Investigate, Recover
Security Brigade activated emergency incident response within 45 minutes of the initial call. A 5-person IR team — 2 on-site within 2 hours, 3 remote — executed containment, forensic investigation, and recovery in parallel. ShadowMap was deployed for external threat intelligence to identify the threat actor and check for data exfiltration on dark web marketplaces.
Services used
Our approach
- 01 Hour 0-2: Remote triage — identified ransomware variant (LockBit 3.0), isolated affected network segments via firewall rules, preserved forensic evidence on 12 critical systems
- 02 Hour 2-6: On-site containment — network-level isolation of reservation and flight ops systems, identified patient zero (phishing email to finance team), blocked C2 communication channels
- 03 Hour 6-48: Forensic investigation — full disk forensics on patient zero, network traffic analysis confirming no data exfiltration, ransomware binary reverse engineering
- 04 Day 3-10: Recovery — clean rebuild of 340 affected endpoints from golden images, hardening of email gateway and endpoint detection, post-incident report with board-ready executive summary
The Results
Contained in 6 Hours — Zero Data Exfiltration, Zero Flights Disrupted
Ransomware contained before reaching reservation or flight operations systems, preventing any operational disruption. Forensic analysis confirmed zero data exfiltration — the attacker had not established a data staging or exfiltration channel before containment. All 340 endpoints recovered within 10 days with hardened security controls.
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