Kraken ransomware benchmarks systems for optimal encryption choice

Kraken is an active ransomware family (linked to HelloKitty) that targets Windows and Linux/VMware ESXi hosts, benchmarks each machine to choose full or partial encryption, abuses SMB vulnerabilities and stolen credentials to gain access, and uses Cloudflared and SSHFS for persistence and data exfiltration; it disables backups, targets SQL/network shares/Hyper-V/VM disks, appends .zpsc to encrypted files, drops ransom notes, and posts victims on leak sites with multi-million-dollar demands.