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Molerats is a politically motivated cyber-espionage threat actor widely associated with the Palestinian nexus and also tracked as Gaza Cybergang, WIRTE, TA402, Ashen Lepus, and Operation Molerats. The group has been active since at least 2012 and is primarily focused on intelligence collection. Its operations have heavily targeted organizations and individuals in the Middle East, especially governmental and diplomatic entities, along with aerospace and defense companies, financial institutions, journalists, and software developers. Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq have been recurring target locations, with additional activity affecting the United States and parts of Europe. Molerats is known for targeted phishing campaigns that distribute malicious attachments and lure documents in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Victims have been induced to open archive files, enable document macros, or otherwise execute embedded content. The group has used multi-stage malware and a diverse toolset including DustySky, SharpStage, DropBook, Spark Backdoor, Quasar RAT, MoleNet Downloader, and Pierogi variants. Reporting also links the actor to JavaScript-based implants, VBScript components, PowerShell-based payload execution, and downloader executables used to retrieve additional malicious files. Observed tradecraft includes use of PowerShell for script execution and payload staging, VBScript for execution and persistence, scheduled tasks for persistence, startup-folder placement of malicious files, browser credential theft using publicly available password recovery tooling, process discovery to enumerate active processes, HTTP-based command-and-control communications, Base64 decoding of embedded payloads, and decompression of ZIP archives on victim systems. The group’s behavior is consistent with sustained post-compromise collection and operational persistence rather than disruptive or financially motivated activity.
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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.
53 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
38 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
33 additional families tracked in Mallory.
1 CVE this actor has used in observed campaigns. 1 of them exploited in the wild.
598 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 one of many threat actors associated with the detection's ATT&CK-style annotations for PowerShell and DNS TXT command-and-control behavior; no specific campaign or activity is described in this reference.
Listed as an associated threat actor in detection annotations for Ghostscript exploitation; no specific campaign activity is described in this reference.
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.
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.