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Handala is an Iranian state-linked cyber threat persona associated with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Also known as Handala Hack, Handala Hacking Team, and Handala Popular Resistance Front, it emerged publicly in late 2023 with pro-Palestinian hacktivist branding. Handala is assessed to be a persona operated by Void Manticore, also tracked as Banished Kitten, Red Sandstorm, and Storm-0842. Homeland Justice and Karma Below are related personas associated with the same MOIS-linked operation. Handala primarily targets Israeli government bodies, critical infrastructure, and private organizations, with additional activity against U.S. targets and Iranian dissidents, journalists, and opposition organizations. Its operations combine disruptive and destructive attacks, data theft, public leaks, and psychological operations. Targeted sectors include healthcare, information technology, energy, government, and media. The group uses public claims and ideological messaging to intimidate victims and influence perceptions, sometimes exaggerating operational impact. In January 2025, it compromised centralized management infrastructure belonging to an Israeli security vendor and broadcast false warning sirens and propaganda through kindergarten public-address systems. It also published historical personal email material belonging to FBI Director Kash Patel. Its intrusion techniques include phishing and messaging-platform social engineering, credential-based access, privilege escalation, persistence, and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Surveillance activity associated with Handala uses the HEAVYGRAM Windows backdoor for remote command execution, host reconnaissance, screenshots, audio recording, file exfiltration, and theft of Telegram session data. HEAVYGRAM uses Telegram infrastructure for command-and-control and exfiltration, supports autorun persistence and DLL sideloading, and can execute additional payloads. The associated CRUDEEXCLUDE utility masquerades as legitimate software and modifies Microsoft Defender exclusions to facilitate malware deployment. Handala also operates public data-leak channels and a dedicated leak site.
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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.
83 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
36 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
31 additional families tracked in Mallory.
9 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 9 of them exploited in the wild.
VOID MANTICORE has exploited public facing vulnerabilities within victim environments to include SharePoint CVE-2019-0604. For HomeLand Justice, threat actors exploited CVE-2019-0604 in Microsoft SharePoint for initial access.
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2017-7921 — Hikvision auth bypass (historical reuse)
One of the Hikvision vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-3626; command injection) grants an attacker full root access to control the device.
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2023-6895 — IP camera RCE
CVEs Weaponized by This Cluster CVE-2024-55591 — FortiOS authentication bypass (modified exploit creates super_admin accounts)
4 more CVEs tied to this actor tracked in Mallory.
273 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.
Mentioned only as background concerning a separate March incident involving material from the FBI director's personal email account.
A pro-Iran hacking group mentioned in connection with publication of material from the FBI director's personal email account.
Reportedly published material from the FBI Director's personal email account in a separate March incident.
Reportedly published historical, non-government information from FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email account.
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.