Ransomware attacks continue to evolve — and the recent emergence of the “Gentlemen” ransomware campaign is a stark reminder of how adversaries are becoming smarter, stealthier, and far more dangerous. According to a detailed analysis published by CyberPress, the Gentlemen group has deployed highly tailored evasion techniques — including abusing legitimate drivers and manipulating Group Policy Objects (GPOs) — to breach organizations across 17 countries. Cyber Security News
What makes this threat so alarming is not just its sophistication, but how it systematically weakens traditional security tools. By using signed drivers like ThrottleBlood.sys to kill protected processes, and by deploying customized variants (e.g. Allpatch2.exe) tailored to disable specific security agents, the attackers effectively neuter detection detectors. They don’t simply “slip past” defenses — they actively degrade them.
On top of that, Gentlemen’s lateral movement strategy involves:
abusing Group Policy to roll out malicious configurations across domains
distributing the ransomware via NETLOGON shares, aggressively killing backups, deleting shadow copies, disabling logging, and suppressing forensic traces
In short: this campaign doesn’t just hide — it strikes the very foundations of endpoint security.
For years, many organizations have relied on a security doctrine rooted in detecting threats, then responding to them — alerting, isolating, cleaning up, and recovering. But modern threats like Gentlemen show us that by the time detection triggers, it might be far too late:
If the attacker has already disabled or evaded the detection technology, alerts never trigger.
If they’ve gained control at the kernel level or manipulated system drivers, they can neutralize your security agents before you even see them.
Once they move laterally and compromise critical systems, response may be overwhelmed by scale.
In essence, relying on detect-and-respond is reactive. You’re always chasing the attacker’s next move.
What’s needed instead is a proactive posture: Isolation and Containment. Rather than waiting to detect, we aim to prevent execution or damage in the first place — or at least confine it tightly before it spreads.
AppGuard is an endpoint protection solution built around this philosophy of isolation and containment. With over 10 years of real-world use (especially in high-assurance environments), AppGuard has proven its ability to block advanced attacks — even when they use zero-day exploits or kernel-level manipulation.
Here’s how it works:
Least-privilege enforcement — Only allow applications the minimum rights they need; block any actions outside their allowed profile.
Dynamic containment — If an application behaves unexpectedly, AppGuard confines it, preventing lateral movement or system damage.
Kernel-level resilience — The protection is enforced at a low level, making it far harder for attackers to disable or tamper with it.
Minimal reliance on signatures or heuristics — AppGuard doesn’t depend heavily on pattern matching. Even custom, obfuscated malware may be blocked by architectural constraints in how it’s allowed (or not allowed) to behave.
Because AppGuard doesn’t wait to see “bad” behavior and then remediate — it prevents unauthorized actions from the start — it is particularly well-suited to counter sophisticated threats like Gentlemen that actively disable defenses.
Let’s walk through how AppGuard’s approach would mitigate each key tactic used by Gentlemen:
| Gentlemen Technique | AppGuard’s Defense |
|---|---|
| Abusing signed drivers (ThrottleBlood.sys) to kill security services | Even if the attacker runs a signed driver, AppGuard’s containment model would prevent unexpected driver operations that lie outside the allowed behavior model. |
| Deploying customized variants to neutralize your specific agent | Because AppGuard isn’t signature-reliant, a tailored payload can’t bypass it simply by evading detection. |
| Manipulating Group Policy across the domain | AppGuard restricts what processes can write to or change GPOs beyond policy, preventing abuse. |
| Using NETLOGON share propagation and mass deployment | AppGuard can confine execution of unknown code even when delivered through trusted shares. |
| Deleting backups, wiping shadow copies, disabling Event Logs | Because AppGuard prevents unauthorized file or system modifications, critical protections (e.g. preventing deletion of shadow copies) can be preserved. |
In short: AppGuard flips the game. Rather than waiting to see attack signatures or anomalies, it enforces a security boundary that even advanced malware finds hard to cross.
Rethink your security philosophy. Don’t treat detection as the cornerstone. Use it as a supplement to real containment.
Audit your endpoints — How many are relying purely on antivirus, EDR, or traditional prevention? These are exactly what adaptive operators like Gentlemen aim to disable.
Pilot AppGuard on mission-critical systems. Its 10-year track record shows that it scales and performs in demanding environments.
Shift security conversations upward. Board- and C-suite-level stakeholders must understand that the threat landscape demands a move from “post-breach detection” to “pre-breach containment.”
The emergence of the Gentlemen ransomware group — exploiting legitimate drivers, neutralizing security agents, and manipulating domain policies — is a wake-up call for every security leader. Traditional detect-and-respond strategies are failing in the face of adaptable, stateful adversaries.
The alternative? A paradigm shift: Isolation and Containment. AppGuard embodies that shift. With a decade of deployment behind it, it offers a practical, proven way for organizations to block what detection-based systems can’t even see.
If you're a business owner or security leader, don’t wait until the next ransomware strike. Talk with us at CHIPS about how AppGuard can protect your endpoints, move you beyond reactive defense, and keep your systems safe from the next “Gentlemen” campaign. Let’s make containment your primary strategy — not an afterthought.
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