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Handala is an Iran-linked cyber persona associated with destructive, hack-and-leak, intimidation, and influence operations, and is widely assessed as part of a Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS)-linked cluster tracked by multiple vendors as Void Manticore, Red Sandstorm, Storm-0842, Banished Kitten, TAG-145, and related labels. Public personas associated with the same operational ecosystem include Homeland Justice and Karma/KarmaBelow80. Handala presents itself as a hacktivist or resistance-branded actor, but reporting consistently places it within a broader Iranian state-aligned cyber-influence apparatus rather than a purely independent activist collective. Active since at least late 2023, Handala has primarily targeted Israeli organizations and individuals, while also claiming or conducting operations affecting U.S. and regional entities during periods of heightened geopolitical tension. Observed and reported targeting spans government, transportation, technology, business services, construction, healthcare, water, energy-adjacent, and other critical or symbolically important sectors. The actor has also been linked to intimidation activity such as publication of personal information and coercive messaging aimed at Israeli professionals and other perceived adversaries. Handala is notable for combining intrusion activity with aggressive information operations. Its tradecraft includes hack-and-leak operations, destructive actions, public breach claims, doxxing, propaganda amplification, and threats intended to maximize psychological and reputational impact. Reporting indicates that the group often uses public personas, leak infrastructure, and coordinated messaging channels to shape narratives around incidents. As with other Iranian persona operations, some public impact claims have exceeded independently verified effects, so the actor’s statements should not be treated as inherently reliable. A major operation attributed or claimed by Handala involved the March 2026 disruption at Stryker. Multiple reports describe the incident as destructive activity against the company’s Microsoft cloud and endpoint-management environment, causing significant operational disruption. High-confidence reporting indicates the actor abused legitimate Microsoft Intune administrative functionality to issue bulk wipe and retire actions after obtaining privileged access, rather than relying on a conventional endpoint wiper binary. This operation illustrates a key aspect of Handala’s capability set: destructive effects achieved through compromise of identity and management planes, including valid administrative accounts and cloud control infrastructure. Handala has also been associated with claimed activity against California Water Service and with broader concern around Iranian targeting of operational technology and industrial control environments. Reporting places Handala within an ecosystem of Iran-linked actors and personas involved in coercive cyber activity during regional conflict, including overlap in narrative timing and strategic signaling with campaigns against Israeli and regional targets. Some reporting also links the group to claimed targeting of industrial control systems and fuel-related infrastructure in the region, though not all such claims are independently verified. The actor’s operational model appears to blend opportunistic access, credential abuse, and destructive or coercive follow-on actions. Reported techniques across Handala-linked activity include use of compromised credentials, valid accounts, cloud administrative abuse, data exfiltration, leak-site publication, and destructive actions intended to disrupt business operations. Broader reporting on the associated MOIS-linked cluster also describes pre-positioning, credential operations, and handoff patterns between espionage-oriented access actors and persona-branded destructive fronts. Handala has additionally been discussed in the context of AI-assisted scripting and accelerated influence operations, though such reporting should be treated cautiously unless independently corroborated. In the wider Iranian cyber ecosystem, Handala functions as a higher-credibility persona for coercion and public impact: a front that can claim intrusions, publish stolen data, threaten additional disruption, and amplify geopolitical messaging while preserving deniability for the underlying state-linked operators. Its significance lies less in bespoke malware innovation than in its integration of intrusion, destructive access, leak operations, and narrative warfare in support of Iranian strategic objectives.
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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.
42 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt; click through for MITRE's full description.
30 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
25 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.
143 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.
Iran-linked disruptive cyber activity including wiping large numbers of employee devices at Stryker and claiming a breach of Cal Water that could disrupt water supply.
Iran-linked group described as leading recent disruptive attacks, including claimed compromises affecting a US medical technology company and a water utility, in the broader context of ICS/OT targeting.
Iranian hacking group linked in the article to disruptive and destructive operations, including wiping employee devices at Stryker and claiming responsibility for a breach affecting Cal Water.
Referenced in connection with a claimed wiper attack against Stryker as part of broader discussion of Iranian public personas and pressure activity.
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.