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Storm-2603, also tracked as Longlegs and Gold Salem, is a ransomware threat actor associated with Warlock ransomware and overlapping activity tracked as CL-CRI-1040. Its operations have a China nexus, but Chinese state sponsorship has not been established. Its documented activity is primarily financially motivated and includes deploying Warlock, LockBit, and AK47/Anylock ransomware. Warlock emerged in June 2025, and the actor has also operated as a LockBit 3.0 affiliate. Storm-2603 principally compromises internet-facing, on-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server deployments. It exploited the ToolShell vulnerability chain, including CVE-2025-49704, CVE-2025-49706, CVE-2025-53770, and CVE-2025-53771. After exploitation, it deploys web shells and steals ASP.NET machine keys, enabling forged, validly signed payloads to execute within SharePoint application pools. Its tooling includes the Project AK47 toolkit and AK47C2 backdoor, DLL-sideloaded loaders, credential-dumping utilities, and legitimate administrative tools. Persistence and remote access mechanisms include scheduled tasks, services, and abuse of Visual Studio Code tunnels. It performs Active Directory reconnaissance, password spraying, privilege escalation, and lateral movement using tools such as NetExec, PsExec, and Impacket. The actor disables endpoint protection through bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver techniques and distributes ransomware using Group Policy changes and trusted Active Directory replication infrastructure. In a July 2026 critical-infrastructure intrusion, a security-disabling utility executed on at least 40 additional hosts within approximately two hours, followed by Warlock deployment on at least 33 systems. Its victims include water utilities, telecommunications providers, government bodies, universities, and engineering companies. Documented targeting spans Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States.
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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.
52 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
21 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
16 additional families tracked in Mallory.
13 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 13 of them exploited in the wild.
The original ToolShell exploit chain involved CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706, with subsequent exploitation activity involving the related CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771 vulnerabilities.
The original ToolShell exploit chain involved CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706. These flaws provided attackers with a path from an exposed SharePoint server to remote code execution and further compromise of the underlying environment.
The original ToolShell exploit chain involved CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706. These flaws provided attackers with a path from an exposed SharePoint server to remote code execution and further compromise of the underlying environment.
The original ToolShell exploit chain involved CVE-2025-49704 and CVE-2025-49706, with subsequent exploitation activity involving the related CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771 vulnerabilities.
A high-severity bug in Microsoft SharePoint that’s been exploited since early July has been abused by ransomware, according to an Aug. 10 update to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. CISA offered no more information on the nature of the ransomware attack, but the CVSS 8.8 flaw — CVE-2026-45659 — was added to the agency’s KEV on July 1 and patched by Microsoft in late May.
8 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
236 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.
An earlier activity cluster linked by Symantec to Longlegs. Mentioned as historical attribution context, without cluster-specific details about the current attacks or an explicit identification as a Longlegs alias.
An older activity cluster mentioned as exhibiting similarities to Warlock. The content does not establish that it is an alias of Warlock or participated in the reported attacks.
Named as a cluster historically associated with Longlegs. The content does not establish that it is an alias or subgroup, or attribute specific activity in the reported intrusions to it.
Mentioned as an older China-nexus activity cluster connected to Longlegs. The content does not describe its distinct operations or establish that it is an alias of Longlegs.
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.