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BERT, also tracked as Water Pombero, is an emerging financially motivated ransomware group first observed in April 2025. It has victimized organizations in Asia, Europe, and the United States, including healthcare, technology, and event-services entities. BERT operates ransomware for Windows and Linux, including ESXi environments. Its Windows operations use a PowerShell-based loader that attempts elevation, impairs Microsoft Defender, firewall protections, and User Account Control before executing the encryptor. The Windows encryptor terminates processes associated with web servers, databases, and other critical services, discovers files across drives, and performs multithreaded AES encryption; newer variants begin encryption while files are being discovered. The Linux variant supports configurable encryption paths and thread counts, uses high-concurrency encryption by default, and can enumerate and forcibly terminate running ESXi virtual machines prior to encryption. BERT's initial-access method and geographic origin are not established.
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.
12 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
1 malware family attributed to this actor across reporting.
1 indicator attributed to this actor: domains, IPs, hashes, and other artifacts pulled from reporting. View more in app.
3 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Named as a new ransomware variant/gang emerging in 2024 and associated with victim claims posted in April 2024.
A newly emerged cross-platform ransomware operation conducting attacks against organizations in Asia, Europe, and the United States. It uses Windows PowerShell loaders to disable defenses and elevate privileges, and Windows and Linux encryptors optimized for concurrent encryption. Its Linux variant targets ESXi environments and forcibly terminates virtual machines before encryption.
Newly emerged ransomware group (no specific victimology or TTPs detailed in the content).
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.