How Charon ransomware affected critical industries, why unmanaged assets are the triggers

Don't let attackers target your blind spots.

---

Charon ransomware has recently emerged as a highly disruptive strain targeting critical industries such as healthcare, manufacturing and financial services. Its ability to exploit unmanaged and neglected assets made it especially dangerous. In these sectors, where uptime and data integrity are vital, Charon caused severe operational downtime, financial loss and reputational damage.

The main issue arises from unmanaged assets, devices, applications and shadow IT resources that operate outside centralised IT oversight. These endpoints often lack consistent patching, sufficient security controls and visibility, creating blind spots for defenders.

Charon’s operators actively searched for such vulnerabilities, using them as entry points into otherwise well-secured environments.

Charon’s attack chain followed a clear but stealthy pattern:

1. Initial access – Exploited outdated or unmonitored endpoints, including shadow IT devices and legacy servers.
2. Privilege escalation – Leveraged credential dumping tools and unpatched vulnerabilities to gain administrative control.
3. Lateral movement – Spread across networks by abusing unmanaged endpoints that lacked endpoint detection or access restrictions.
4. Payload execution – Encrypted critical files and demanded ransom payments in crypto-currency.
5. Persistence and evasion – Used encrypted communications and obfuscation techniques to evade detection until encryption was complete.

By concentrating on unmanaged assets, Charon bypassed fortified perimeter defences and rapidly spread through trusted networks.

To counter threats like Charon, organisations must move beyond reactive patching and adopt continuous threat exposure management (CTEM).

Cyber X-CTEM’s platform provides two critical capabilities that directly address the root cause of Charon’s spread:

• Shadow IT discovery

Cyber X-CTEM continuously identifies and categorises unmanaged and unknown assets, including unauthorised SaaS applications, rogue devices and outdated servers. By mapping the genuine attack surface, it eliminates blind spots that ransomware targets.

• Allowlisting and access control

With allowlisting, only approved applications, endpoints and users are allowed to interact within the environment. This helps prevent ransomware from executing malicious binaries or using unauthorised devices to spread laterally. Even if Charon gained initial access, its ability to spread would be contained.

Together, these controls ensure that unmanaged assets are identified, managed and neutralised before they can serve as ransomware launchpads.

Organisations adopting Cyber X-CTEM’s proactive approach can achieve measurable results:

• Reduced attack surface – By eliminating unmanaged assets, the number of exploitable entry points for ransomware is drastically reduced.
• Containment of threats – Allowlisting stops malicious executables and prevents lateral spread, minimising impact even if a breach occurs.
• Operational continuity – Critical industries maintain uptime, safeguard sensitive data and protect customer trust.
• Regulatory assurance – Enhanced visibility and control help meet compliance requirements around asset management and cyber resilience.

Charon ransomware highlights how unmanaged assets are the key weak points in modern enterprises. Attackers target blind spots, but with Cyber X-CTEM’s shadow IT discovery and allowlisting, organisations can turn unknown risks into controlled defences. Instead of waiting for ransomware to find hidden entry points, enterprises can permanently seal them, boosting resilience, visibility and peace of mind.

Andrzej Jarmolowicz is co-founder and Operations Director at Cybershure. The company is a distributor of bespoke IT solutions, with offices in London and South Africa, and is the sole distributor of CyberCyte in Africa.