Operation Ghoul
- Primary motivation
- financial-gain
- Sophistication
- intermediate
- Resource level
- organization
- Actor type
- criminal
- Profile updated
- 2026-07-07 12:13:47
Targeted industries: manufacturing technology-and-telecommunications financial-services
Context
Operation Ghoul is a profit-driven threat actor that targeted over 130 organizations in 30 countries, primarily in the industrial and engineering sectors. They employed high-quality social engineering techniques, such as spear-phishing emails disguised as payment advice from a UAE bank, to distribute malware. The group's main motivation is financial gain through the sale of stolen intellectual property and business intelligence, as well as attacks on banking accounts. Their attacks were effective, particularly against companies that were unprepared to detect them.
Reports & references
- Kaspersky — 76858 (report)
- Kaspersky — 75718 (report)