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Handala is an Iran-linked cyber persona publicly associated with disruptive intrusions, data theft, psychological operations, and attacks against critical infrastructure and private-sector organizations. U.S. authorities have stated that Handala is operated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) as a fictitious persona, and have linked it with related personas including Homeland Justice and Karma Below. Security reporting also associates Handala with the cluster tracked as VOID MANTICORE, and aliases including Banished Kitten, Dune, Red Sandstorm, Storm-0842, and Homeland Justice have been used in overlapping attribution contexts. The actor has been active in operations targeting Israel, Albania, and the United States, with victimology spanning government entities, water and wastewater utilities, healthcare and medical technology, payment processing, media, and other critical infrastructure. In Albania, the related Homeland Justice persona has been tied to destructive and ransomware-style campaigns against government and infrastructure organizations. In Israel and the United States, Handala has claimed or been linked to attacks involving data theft, operational disruption, and influence-oriented messaging intended to amplify political and psychological impact. Tradecraft attributed to this cluster includes exploitation of public-facing applications, use of PowerShell for execution, hidden or user-unaware script execution, automated collection, credential theft from Windows registry hives, persistent surveillance through trojanized applications, and DNS-based command-and-control behavior. Reporting also links the actor to use of commodity or acquired malware, including information stealers, and to campaigns distributing malware through impersonation and social-engineering lures. In destructive operations associated with Homeland Justice, the cluster has used wiper malware and administrative access to propagate payloads across Windows environments, including via remote management mechanisms. Handala’s operations frequently combine technical intrusion with overt propaganda, public claims of responsibility, and anti-Western or anti-Israeli messaging. The actor has used public channels to leak stolen data and frame attacks as retaliation in the context of regional conflict. The overall pattern is consistent with state-directed espionage, disruption, coercive signaling, and deniable proxy-style cyber operations aligned with Iranian geopolitical objectives.
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Who, where, and (when attributed) which flag flies behind the operation. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
50 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
32 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
27 additional families tracked in Mallory.
9 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 9 of them exploited in the wild.
VOID MANTICORE has exploited public facing vulnerabilities within victim environments to include SharePoint CVE-2019-0604. For HomeLand Justice, threat actors exploited CVE-2019-0604 in Microsoft SharePoint for initial access.
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2017-7921 — Hikvision auth bypass (historical reuse)
One of the Hikvision vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-3626; command injection) grants an attacker full root access to control the device.
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2023-6895 — IP camera RCE
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2024-55591 — FortiOS authentication bypass (modified exploit creates super_admin accounts)
4 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
153 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Iran-linked group claiming responsibility for the March 11 cyberattack against US medical technology company Stryker during the broader period of Iranian cyber retaliation following US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
Claimed attacks against Stryker and Verifone as part of a broader wave of cyberattacks tied in the article to geopolitical retaliation.
Iran-linked hacktivist group cited as having disrupted Stryker’s operations and claimed responsibility for hacking the personal Gmail account of FBI director Kash Patel.
Iran-linked cyber persona/group presented as part of an MOIS-controlled cyber ecosystem used to provide deniability and support coercive, influence, espionage, and potentially disruptive cyber operations.
Match sector + geo + tech-stack targeting against your real footprint.
Every observed MITRE ATT&CK technique, grouped by tactic.
Families this actor is known to deploy, with IOCs and behavior.
CVEs this actor has used in known campaigns.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Domains, IPs, and hashes tied to this actor, refreshed continuously.