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ALPHA SPIDER is the financially motivated cybercriminal actor responsible for developing and operating the ALPHV ransomware-as-a-service platform, also known as BlackCat and Noberus. The operation emerged in late 2021 and supplies ransomware and extortion infrastructure to affiliates that conduct intrusions in exchange for a share of ransom payments. ALPHV uses double extortion, combining encryption with data theft and threats to publish stolen information on searchable leak sites. Its Rust-based ransomware supports Windows and Linux environments, including VMware ESXi infrastructure. ALPHV affiliates have targeted organizations across multiple regions and sectors, including energy, healthcare, and defense contractors. Observed intrusion methods include purchased initial access, compromised credentials, social engineering, and exploitation of internet-facing systems. Affiliate tradecraft includes Cobalt Strike, PsExec, credential extraction from Windows and Veeam environments, network scanning, reverse-SSH persistence, and data exfiltration using ExMatter, Rclone, and cloud-storage clients. Some affiliates have exploited CVE-2021-44529 in Ivanti Cloud Services Appliance and used PwnKit for privilege escalation. Defense-evasion techniques include disabling security products, concealing executables in NTFS alternate data streams, and manipulating local name resolution to bypass filtering or trigger authentication fail-open behavior. ALPHV payloads can propagate through networks, delete shadow copies, stop services, and disrupt ESXi virtual machines and snapshots. Known affiliates include Velvet Tempest, formerly DEV-0504, and Pistachio Tempest, formerly DEV-0237. These are distinct intrusion actors rather than interchangeable aliases for ALPHA SPIDER; Velvet Tempest has deployed multiple ransomware families beyond ALPHV. In December 2023, the FBI disrupted ALPHV's leak-site infrastructure and made decryption assistance available for hundreds of victims. The operation subsequently restored its leak-site presence, which went offline again in March 2024.
Mallory correlates actor tradecraft and target patterns against your stack, your sector, and your geography. See overlap before they land.
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.
17 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
16 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
11 additional families tracked in Mallory.
3 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 3 of them exploited in the wild.
Following network discovery and vulnerability scanning, Threat Actor 1 attempted to exploit CVE-2021-21972, described as a remote code execution vulnerability in a vCenter Server plugin that permits commands to run with unrestricted privileges.
After obtaining code execution on the CSA server, Threat Actor 1 exploited a vulnerability described as PwnKit to temporarily obtain root privileges and create a new UID 0 account. The exploitation paragraph identifies it as CVE-2021-40347, while the linked hunting article identifies PwnKit as CVE-2021-4034.
Threat Actor 1 leveraged CVE-2021-44529 in the Ivanti EPM Cloud Services Appliance to execute arbitrary code as the limited-permission user nobody. The article states that a patch was available before exploitation on December 2, 2021.
4 indicators attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
13 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Operator attributed with a ClickFix-driven intrusion culminating in hands-on-keyboard activity and deployment of Termite ransomware.
Operator attributed to a ClickFix-driven intrusion culminating in hands-on-keyboard activity and deployment of Termite ransomware.
Linked to a ClickFix-driven intrusion chain that culminates in hands-on-keyboard activity and deployment of Termite ransomware.
Financially motivated threat actor tracked by Microsoft under the Tempest family.
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.