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Ryuk is a financially motivated ransomware operation active since 2018 and widely associated with the Russian cybercriminal ecosystem commonly tracked as Wizard Spider and the TrickBot Group. It is frequently described as a predecessor to, rebrand of, or closely overlapping operation with Conti, with reporting indicating shared personnel, management, tooling, and access to TrickBot and Emotet infrastructure. Known aliases and related designations include Ryuk, Ryuk gang, Ryuk operators, and associations in some reporting with UNC1878. Ryuk is known for targeted, human-operated intrusions rather than indiscriminate mass encryption. Initial access and delivery have been linked to malware and access brokers in the TrickBot, Emotet, BazarLoader, and Zloader ecosystems, as well as phishing-driven compromises and exposed remote access pathways in victim environments. Post-compromise activity associated with Ryuk-linked operations includes rapid progression from foothold to domain-wide impact, use of reverse-shell access provided by TrickBot, credential abuse, privilege escalation, lateral movement, and broad network reconnaissance. Operators have been observed using tools such as Advanced IP Scanner for internal discovery and have been associated with exploitation of enterprise weaknesses to expand access across Windows networks. The group’s operational behavior centers on enterprise-wide ransomware deployment for high-value extortion. Ryuk has been tied to multimillion-dollar ransom demands and major attacks against municipalities, educational institutions, hospitals, and large enterprises. Reporting also links the operation to data theft and extortion practices in the broader Conti/Ryuk lineage, although the strongest consistent characterization of Ryuk itself is financially motivated ransomware. Technical and operational overlaps with Conti, Diavol, and other TrickBot-linked ransomware families indicate a broader criminal cluster rather than a fully isolated group. Victimology includes organizations in the United States, France, Japan, and other countries, with targeting spanning government and public sector entities, healthcare, education, financial organizations, manufacturing-related enterprises, and other large businesses. Ryuk has also been referenced in connection with campaigns affecting critical infrastructure and supply-chain-adjacent sectors through actors or clusters with possible ties to the group. Overall, Ryuk is best understood as a major Russian-linked ransomware actor within the Wizard Spider/TrickBot cybercrime nexus, notable for targeted intrusions, fast lateral spread inside enterprise environments, and high-value extortion operations.
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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.
49 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
10 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
5 additional families tracked in Mallory.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A prolific ransomware group active from 2018 to 2020 that compromised hundreds of servers and workstations at US organizations and other victims, deploying Ryuk ransomware and collecting bitcoin ransom payments.
Ransomware operation active from 2018 to mid-2020 that targeted U.S. company networks across multiple sectors, including healthcare, using illegally obtained initial access to deploy ransomware and extort victims for Bitcoin payments.
A cybercrime group identified as the predecessor from which Conti emerged.
Referenced as part of the cybercrime syndicate tied to earlier BazarCall callback phishing campaigns that provided initial access for ransomware attacks.
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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.