Moses Staff
MITRE ATT&CK: G1009 View on attack.mitre.org
Aliases: DEV-0500, Marigold Sandstorm, Moses Staff, VENGEFUL KITTEN, DEV-500
- First seen
- 2021-09-01 00:00:00
- Origin
- IR
- Primary motivation
- ideology
- Sophistication
- intermediate
- Actor type
- nation-state
- Related IoCs
- 3 (3 malicious)
- Last IoC activity
- 2026-01-14 20:41:20
- Profile updated
- 2026-07-07 12:33:22
Targeted industries: financial-services government-and-public-sector energy-and-utilities manufacturing transportation-and-logistics
Targeted regions: country_code:il country_code:it country_code:in country_code:de country_code:cl country_code:tr country_code:ae country_code:us
Context
Moses Staff is a suspected Iranian threat group that has primarily targeted Israeli companies since at least September 2021. Moses Staff openly stated their motivation in attacking Israeli companies is to cause damage by leaking stolen sensitive data and encrypting the victim's networks without a ransom demand. Security researchers assess Moses Staff is politically motivated, and has targeted government, finance, travel, energy, manufacturing, and utility companies outside of Israel as well, including those in Italy, India, Germany, Chile, Turkey, the UAE, and the US.
Recent IoC activity
3 malicious indicators in Maltiverse are attributed to Moses Staff (G1009). The 3 most recently updated:
| Type | Indicator | Updated | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| hostname | moses-staff.se | 2026-01-14 | 1 |
| hostname | abrahams-ax.se | 2025-11-17 | 1 |
| hostname | abrahams-ax.nu | 2025-10-23 | 1 |
Detection coverage
- 1 YARA rules
- 261 Sigma rules
Malware & tools used
- SMB/Windows Admin Shares (attack-pattern)
- System Network Configuration Discovery (attack-pattern)
- Local Account (attack-pattern)
- Windows Host Firewall (attack-pattern)
- System Information Discovery (attack-pattern)
- Tool (attack-pattern)
- Web Shell (attack-pattern)
- Malware (attack-pattern)
- Code Signing (attack-pattern)
- Encrypted/Encoded File (attack-pattern)
- Ingress Tool Transfer (attack-pattern)
- Exploit Public-Facing Application (attack-pattern)
- PyDCrypt (malware)
- DCSrv (malware)
- StrifeWater (malware)
- PsExec (malware)
Reports & references
- twitter.com — 1450455259202166799 (report)
- research.checkpoint.com — Mosesstaff Targeting Israeli Companies (report)
- cybereason.com — Strifewater Rat Iranian Apt Moses Staff Adds New Trojan To Ransomware Operations (report)
- fortinet.com — Guard Your Drive From Driveguard (report)
- raw.githubusercontent.com — Microsoftmapping (report)
- Microsoft — Microsoft Threat Actor Naming (report)
- MITRE ATT&CK — G1009 (report)
- cybereason.com — Strifewater Rat Iranian Apt Moses Staff Adds New Trojan To Ransomware Operations (report)