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Handala, also known as Handala Hack and Handala Hacking Team, is an Iranian state-linked cyber persona affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). It is associated with the threat actor tracked as Void Manticore, Banished Kitten, Red Sandstorm, and Storm-0842. Emerging publicly in late 2023, Handala adopted pro-Palestinian hacktivist branding while conducting destructive attacks, hack-and-leak operations, and psychological influence campaigns. Homeland Justice is a related operational persona associated with the same Iranian activity. Handala primarily targets Israeli organizations, including government bodies, security vendors, critical infrastructure, and private-sector companies, and has also targeted United States organizations and officials. Its operations combine phishing and credential-based intrusion with privilege escalation, persistence, data exfiltration, denial-of-service attacks, and destructive malware. It publishes stolen information through dedicated leak channels and websites, using disclosures and exaggerated impact claims to intimidate targets and shape public perceptions. In January 2025, Handala compromised the centralized management infrastructure of Israeli security vendor Maagar-Tec and used connected public-address equipment to broadcast false emergency alerts and propaganda in approximately 20 kindergartens. It also published historical personal material from FBI Director Kash Patel’s email account; the FBI acknowledged malicious targeting and stated that the exposed information contained no government information. Handala-associated surveillance activity uses the HEAVYGRAM backdoor for Telegram-based command-and-control, remote command execution, reconnaissance, screenshot capture, file exfiltration, and persistence. The accompanying CRUDEEXCLUDE utility masquerades as legitimate software and configures Microsoft Defender exclusions to facilitate malware deployment. Such activity extends the persona’s operations beyond public disruption into monitoring dissidents and opposition groups.
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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.
83 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
36 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
31 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.
273 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.
A pro-Palestinian hacktivist group discussed as a possible influence or connection to Uways Qarani. The article describes Handala's disclosure of Israeli Air Force personnel information and its use of Telegram, a self-hosted leak site and downloadable evidence. Uways Qarani credits training and guidance to leaders of the Handala Popular Resistance Front, but the investigation found no shared IP address, domain, account or file establishing a technical or operational connection between the groups.
Mentioned only as background concerning a separate March incident involving material from the FBI director's personal email account.
A pro-Iran hacking group mentioned in connection with publication of material from the FBI director's personal email account.
Reportedly published material from the FBI Director's personal email account in a separate March incident.
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.