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Molerats, also known as Gaza Cybergang, TA402, WIRTE, Operation Molerats, and Ashen Lepus, is a long-running Middle East-focused cyber-espionage cluster active since at least 2012 and widely assessed as Hamas-aligned or operating in support of Palestinian interests. The group’s operations are primarily oriented toward intelligence collection and political espionage. Public reporting also describes adjacent or overlapping sub-groups within the broader Gaza Cybergang ecosystem, including Molerats as one component alongside Arid Viper and activity associated with Operation Parliament, with evidence of shared victims, malware evolution, and partial operational consolidation over time. The actor primarily targets Palestinian entities and Israel, while also conducting less frequent activity against organizations in the broader Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Victim sectors include government, military and defense, energy, financial services, information technology, telecommunications, media, and civil society. Campaigns commonly rely on spearphishing and social engineering, including malicious email attachments, weaponized Office documents, PDF lures, archive files, and phishing links. The group has also used look-alike branding and impersonation themes involving trusted security providers to increase click-through rates. Molerats is associated with a diverse malware set that includes DustySky, DropBook, SharpStage, MoleNet, Molerat Loader, Pierogi, Pierogi++, Spark, XtremeRAT, and PoisonIvy. Recent activity has featured Micropsia-family malware and the Pierogi++ backdoor, including Arabic-language political and cultural decoys aimed at Palestinian targets. Observed functionality includes command execution, screenshot capture, file download, browser password theft, and general remote-access backdoor behavior. The group has used public credential-dumping utilities against browser password stores. Tradecraft attributed to Molerats includes PowerShell and script-based execution, Base64 decoding and staged payload delivery, ZIP archive decompression on victim systems, HTTP-based command-and-control, and persistence via Startup-folder artifacts. Reported infection chains often require user execution, such as enabling malicious macros or opening archives and embedded content. The actor’s sustained focus, regional victimology, and tooling evolution are consistent with an espionage-driven threat cluster rather than financially motivated cybercrime.
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47 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
34 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
29 additional families tracked in Mallory.
1 CVE this actor has used in observed campaigns. 1 of them exploited in the wild.
544 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.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection.
Listed as a threat actor associated with the PowerShell P/Invoke process injection API chain detection and related ATT&CK techniques.
Listed as a threat actor associated with PowerShell execution behavior relevant to this detection analytic.
Listed as a threat actor associated with Windows Command Shell execution behavior relevant to this detection.
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.