In December 2025, a beforehand unknown ransomware-as-a-service operation named Sicarii emerged throughout underground platforms, introducing itself as an Israeli or Jewish affiliated group.
The operation stands aside from typical financially motivated ransomware as a consequence of its specific use of Hebrew language, Israeli symbols, and references to historic Jewish teams in its branding.
In contrast to established ransomware operations that preserve operational secrecy, Sicarii overtly incorporates the Haganah image alongside Hebrew textual content in its visible identification, creating an uncommon presence within the cybercriminal panorama.
The group claims to give attention to focusing on organizations in Arab and Muslim international locations whereas explicitly avoiding Israeli methods.
The malware employs a geo-fencing mechanism that forestalls execution on methods recognized as Israeli, checking time zones, keyboard layouts, and community adapter IP addresses to establish native targets.
Sicarii Ransomware emblem that includes the phrase “The Sicarii Knife” in Hebrew textual content with the image of the Haganah (Supply – Test Level)
This selective focusing on strategy, mixed with ideological messaging, distinguishes Sicarii from standard ransomware teams working from Japanese Europe or Russia.
Test Level analysts recognized a classy technical infrastructure underlying the Sicarii operation.
The ransomware begins execution by way of an anti-virtualization part that detects sandbox environments and shows a misleading error message to keep away from evaluation.
Risk’s Profile image (Supply – Test Level)
It then copies itself to the non permanent listing as svchost_{random}.exe and exams web connectivity by contacting google.com/generate_204 a number of occasions to make sure operational readiness.
Lateral Motion By way of Community Reconnaissance
After establishing execution context, the malware performs aggressive community reconnaissance to map the sufferer’s setting.
The malware enumerates native community configurations by way of ARP requests and scans for uncovered RDP providers throughout found methods.
Extra considerably, it actively makes an attempt to use Fortinet gadgets utilizing CVE-2025-64446, a vulnerability that gives lateral motion pathways inside compromised networks.
This reconnaissance part helps each community penetration and information assortment targets, making it notably harmful for organizations with blended safety infrastructure.
The malware collects intensive information together with system credentials, browser data, and utility information from platforms like Discord, Slack, Telegram, and cryptocurrency wallets.
Sicarii onion web site (Supply – Test Level)
All harvested information will get packaged right into a ZIP archive named collected_data.zip and exfiltrated by way of file.io. Following information exfiltration, the ransomware establishes persistence by way of a number of mechanisms together with registry modifications, service creation, and new person accounts with hardcoded credentials.
The encryption part makes use of AES-GCM with 256-bit keys, appending the .sicarii extension to encrypted information.
The operation concludes with a damaging element that deploys a batch script at startup, corrupting bootloader information and forcing speedy system shutdown.
Organizations ought to prioritize patching Fortinet gadgets and implementing community segmentation to include this rising menace.
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