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Threat Actor

Wizard Spider

wizard_spider_conti · russia_speaking_cybercrime · active since 2016

Wizard Spider (Conti / TrickBot Group / Periwinkle Tempest / Gold Ulrick / ITG23 / UAC-0098 / DEV-0193 / Storm-0193 / Ryuk operators / Hermes operators / G0102) is one of the most operationally consequential financially-motivated organized cyber-criminal clusters in the publicly-tracked record, active since at least 2016 from Russia and adjacent post-Soviet states with operational lineage spanning TrickBot banking-trojan operations (2016-2020), Ryuk ransomware (2018-2020), Conti ransomware (May 2020 - May 2022), and the successor-diaspora era (Black Basta, Karakurt, Royal / BlackSuit, Quantum, BlackByte, Zeon since May 2022), with the strongest formal- attribution profile of any contemporary publicly-tracked organized cyber-criminal cluster grounded in multiple US DOJ indictments (Dunaev sentenced Jan 2024 to 5y4mo federal prison, Witte sentenced June 2023), Feb 9 2023 US Treasury OFAC sanctions of seven Russian nationals (Kovalev, Mikhailov, Karyagin, Galochkin, Iskritskiy, Loguntsov, Pleshevskiy), Sept 7 2023 US-UK coordinated joint sanctions of eleven additional Russian nationals, and CISA+FBI+NSA AA21-265A advisory.

most operationally consequential cluster operations include Ireland Health Service Executive attack May 2021 (Irish national healthcare disruption for weeks), Costa Rica government attack April-May 2022 (triggered Costa Rica's first-ever national cyber-emergency declaration May 8 2022), and documented compromise of 1000+ organizations across all major verticals during the Conti era.

most operationally consequential cluster- exposure event the ContiLeaks (February 27, 2022), a Ukrainian-aligned cluster member publicly leaked approximately 60,000 internal Conti chat communications following Conti's February 25, 2022 public-statement supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, documenting unprecedented internal organizational structure (HR-style personnel management, internal training, project-management workflows, hierarchical management with salary and bonus structures, operator identities, and apparent intelligence-service contacts) and remaining a foundational reference for understanding organized cyber-criminal enterprise structures.

russia_speaking_cybercrime confidence: high 39 aliases MITRE ATT&CK G0102 ↗

Profile

Wizard Spider (also tracked as Conti, TrickBot Group, Periwinkle Tempest [Microsoft], Gold Ulrick, ITG23 [IBM X-Force], UAC-0098, DEV-0193 / Storm-0193, Ryuk operators, Hermes operators, and MITRE ATT&CK G0102) is one of the most operationally consequential financially-motivated organized cyber-criminal clusters in the publicly-tracked record, active since at least 2016 from Russia and adjacent post-Soviet states. The cluster is not a state- aligned cluster (operations are profit-driven rather than intelligence-collection-driven) though operational coordination with Russian state security services has been alleged in vendor reporting and selective ContiLeaks-revealed contacts.

the cluster has demonstrated apparent operational tolerance from Russian authorities consistent with the broader pattern of Russian jurisdictional tolerance of cybercrime operations targeting Western victims.

The cluster's operational lineage spans three major operational eras: TrickBot banking-trojan operations (2016-2020), Ryuk ransomware operations (2018-2020), Conti ransomware operations (May 2020
  • May 2022), and the successor-diaspora era (May 2022 onward via Black Basta, Karakurt, Royal / BlackSuit, Quantum, BlackByte, Zeon, and other successor brands). Across all four eras the cluster demonstrated sophisticated organizational structure: HR-style personnel management with multiple specialty teams (development, operations, negotiation, network-administration, training), internal training programs, project-management workflows, financial-management infrastructure, hierarchical management with formal salary and bonus structures, and relationships with other cyber-criminal clusters and apparent intelligence-service contacts. The cluster has the strongest formal-attribution profile of any contemporary publicly-tracked organized cyber-criminal cluster.
Multiple sustained Western law-enforcement actions
  • November 2021 US DOJ Northern District of Ohio indictments of Vladimir Dunaev (Russian national, TrickBot development) and Alla Witte (Latvian national, TrickBot development). Dunaev extradited from South Korea, pleaded guilty November 2023, sentenced January 2024 to five years and four months federal prison. Witte pleaded guilty June 2022, sentenced June 2023.
  • February 9, 2023 US Treasury OFAC sanctions designating seven Russian nationals as Conti / TrickBot cluster members: Vitaly Kovalev, Maksim Mikhailov, Valentin Karyagin, Maksim Galochkin, Mikhail Iskritskiy, Sergey Loguntsov, Dmitry Pleshevskiy.
  • September 7, 2023 US-UK coordinated joint sanctions designating eleven additional Russian nationals as TrickBot / Conti cluster members.
  • CISA + FBI + NSA AA21-265A Conti Cybersecurity Advisory (September 22, 2021) consolidating US federal-agency tracking. The most operationally consequential and historically significant cluster-exposure event was ContiLeaks (February 27, 2022). Following Conti's February 25, 2022 public-statement supporting Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a Ukrainian-aligned Conti cluster member publicly leaked approximately 60,000 internal Conti chat communications spanning multiple years. ContiLeaks documented the cluster's internal organizational structure in unprecedented detail, specific operator identities and aliases, salary and bonus structures, operational decision-making, recruitment processes, and relationships with other cyber-criminal clusters and apparent intelligence-service contacts. The leak remains a foundational reference for understanding organized cyber-criminal enterprise structures and contributed substantially to subsequent sanctions actions and operational tracking.
The most operationally consequential cluster operations include
  • Ireland Health Service Executive attack (May 2021): disruption of Irish national healthcare IT for weeks; Ireland publicly refused ransom payment; recovery costs and operational impact substantially exceeded ransom demand.
  • Costa Rica government attack (April-May 2022): triggered Costa Rica's first-ever national cyber-emergency declaration (May 8, 2022); disrupted government IT operations for weeks.
  • Multiple US hospital network attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic period (October 2020 CISA AA20-302A alert) which elevated US federal-government attention to ransomware as national-security issue.
  • Documented compromise of more than one thousand organizations across all major verticals during the Conti era. Following sustained Western law-enforcement pressure, the ContiLeaks operational exposure, and the Costa Rica attack's elevated international policy attention, the Conti brand was officially shut down in May-June 2022. Personnel reorganized into multiple successor brands while maintaining substantial overlap in personnel, tooling, and tradecraft.
Successor brands include
  • Black Basta (operational from April 2022, becoming one of the most prolific ransomware operations of 2022-2024)
  • Karakurt (extortion-only operation, no encryption, financial model based purely on data-theft-and-publication threat)
  • Royal / BlackSuit (operational from January 2022, rebranded BlackSuit in 2023, prolific 2023-2024 operations)
  • Quantum.
  • BlackByte.
  • Zeon The successor-diaspora pattern represents one of the most consequential ongoing developments in the publicly-tracked cybercrime ecosystem, formal cluster shutdown does not equal operational shutdown when personnel reorganize under new brands. A handful of operational notes: First, the cluster's relationship with Russian state security services has been alleged in vendor reporting and selective ContiLeaks-revealed contacts. The cleanest framing is that the cluster operates as financially-motivated organized cybercrime with apparent Russian state tolerance (consistent with broader Russian jurisdictional tolerance of cybercrime targeting Western victims) rather than as state-directed operations. The pattern complicates simple state-aligned-vs-cybercriminal categorization and represents an analytically interesting gray zone in cluster taxonomy. Second, the cluster's analytical profile differs from FIN7 (already covered as fin7.yaml) and Scattered Spider (already covered as scattered_spider.yaml) in several ways despite all three being financially-motivated organized cyber-criminal clusters: operational scale (Wizard Spider/Conti compromised 1000+ organizations vs FIN7's 100+ and Scattered Spider's smaller-but-higher-impact targets), operational era (Wizard Spider/Conti 2016-2022 vs FIN7 2013-present vs Scattered Spider 2022-present), operator composition (Russian-speaking vs Russian-speaking vs English-speaking-native), and operational tradecraft emphasis (banking-trojan-and-ransomware vs spear- phishing-and-implant vs social-engineering-and-living-off-the- land). The three clusters collectively represent meaningful diversity in publicly-tracked cyber-criminal cluster operational profiles. Third, the successor-diaspora era should be tracked as continuing operational threat rather than as historically-retired threat. Defender threat-modeling for ransomware operations should treat Black Basta, Karakurt, Royal / BlackSuit, Quantum, BlackByte, and Zeon as continuing Wizard Spider / Conti successor activity with sustained operational capability. Fourth, ContiLeaks represents one of the most consequential cyber-criminal cluster internal-exposure events in the publicly- tracked record. The leaks remain a foundational reference for defender, researcher, and policy-maker understanding of how sophisticated cyber-criminal clusters actually operate internally , providing public-source intelligence that exceeds what vendor-research and law-enforcement disclosure typically reveals.

Aliases

39
wizard spiderwizard_spiderwizardspiderconticonti gangconti_gangconti ransomware groupconti_ransomware_grouptrickbot grouptrickbot_grouptrickbot gangtrickbot_gangtb gangtb_gangperiwinkle tempestperiwinkle_tempestperiwinkletempestgold ulrickgold_ulrickgoldulrickitg23itg 23itg_23uac-0098uac_0098uac0098dev-0193dev_0193dev0193storm-0193storm 0193storm_0193ryuk operatorsryuk_operatorshermes operatorshermes_operatorsg0102atk 169atk169

MITRE ATT&CK aliases

7
Additional names MITRE lists for G0102.
UNC1878TEMP.MixMasterGrim SpiderFIN12GOLD BLACKBURNPistachio TempestDEV-0237

Notable Campaigns

12
2023-2024Vladimir Dunaev and Alla Witte Guilty Pleas and Sentencing (2023-2024)
2023US Treasury OFAC: Seven Russian Nationals Sanctioned as Conti / TrickBot Members (February 9, 2023)
2023US-UK Coordinated Joint Sanctions, Eleven Additional Russian Nationals (September 7, 2023)
2022-2025Successor Diaspora Continued Operations (2022-2025)
2022ContiLeaks, Internal Chat Log Exposure (February 27, 2022)
2022Costa Rica Government Attack, National Cyber-Emergency Declaration (April-May 2022)
2022Conti Brand Official Shutdown (May-June 2022)
2021Ireland Health Service Executive Attack (May 2021)
2021CISA + FBI + NSA AA21-265A Conti Cybersecurity Advisory (September 22, 2021)
2020-2022Conti Ransomware Brand Operations (May 2020 - May 2022)
2018-2019Ryuk Ransomware Emergence (August 2018 onward)
2016-2020TrickBot Banking Trojan Operations (2016-2020)

Attribution & Reporting

Attributed by
United States Department of JusticeFBI Cyber DivisionUS Treasury OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control)CISA (US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)UK National Crime AgencyUK Office of Financial Sanctions ImplementationMandiant / Google Cloud Threat IntelligenceMicrosoft Threat Intelligence CenterCrowdStrikeRecorded Future Insikt GroupSentinelOneSophosTrend MicroKaspersky GReATGroup-IBPRODAFTCybereasonIBM X-ForcePWC Threat IntelligenceDFIR ReportTrellixCovewareHalcyonConti Leaks (internal chat-log exposure, February 27, 2022)
Key reporting
reportCrowdStrike: Wizard Spider Adversary Update (multiple years), seminal cluster naming
reportCrowdStrike: Big Game Hunting with Ryuk, Another Lucrative Targeted Ransomware (January 2019)
reportMicrosoft: TrickBot Disrupted (October 2020), Operation TrickBot Takedown
reportCISA + FBI + NSA: AA21-265A Conti Cybersecurity Advisory (September 22, 2021)
reportUS DOJ Northern District of Ohio: Vladimir Dunaev and Alla Witte Indictments (November 2021)
reportUS DOJ: Vladimir Dunaev Guilty Plea and Sentencing (November 2023 / January 2024)
reportContiLeaks: Internal Conti Chat Log Public Exposure (February 27, 2022 onward), unprecedented internal cluster exposure
reportCheck Point Research: Leaks of Conti Ransomware Group Paint Picture of Surprisingly Normal Tech Start-up (March 2022)
reportTrellix: Conti Leaks Examination (multiple analyses 2022)
reportDFIR Report: Conti Leaks Overview
reportRecorded Future Insikt Group: Conti Leaks Tracking (March 2022 and continued)
reportVitali Kremez (independent researcher): Conti Leaks Analysis
reportBrian Krebs: ContiLeaks Investigation
reportUS Treasury OFAC: Conti / TrickBot Sanctions Announcement (February 9, 2023), seven Russian nationals
reportUS-UK Joint Sanctions: Eleven Additional Russian Nationals TrickBot / Conti Designations (September 7, 2023)
reportMandiant: TrickBot / Conti Ecosystem Continued Tracking
reportMalpedia Actor Profile: Wizard Spider / Conti
reportMITRE ATT&CK Group G0102, Wizard Spider

Operational

State sponsor

Wizard Spider is a financially-motivated organized cyber-criminal cluster, not a state-aligned cluster, operating predominantly from Russia and adjacent post-Soviet states including Ukraine, Belarus, and other Russian-speaking jurisdictions. The cluster operated the TrickBot banking-trojan ecosystem since approximately 2016 and subsequently operated the Ryuk and Conti ransomware brands across approximately 2018-2022. The cluster is one of the most operationally consequential financially-motivated cyber- criminal clusters in the publicly-tracked record with documented compromise of hundreds of major organizations across all major verticals. Formal attribution has been established through multiple US Department of Justice indictments and sanctions: November 2021 unsealing of US DOJ indictments of Vladimir Dunaev (Russian national, charged with TrickBot development; subsequently extradited from South Korea, pleaded guilty November 2023, sentenced January 2024 to five years and four months federal prison)

November 2021 indictment of Alla Witte (Latvian national, charged with TrickBot development.

pleaded guilty June 2022, sentenced June 2023)

February 2023 US Treasury OFAC sanctions designating seven Russian nationals as Conti / TrickBot members (including Vitaly Kovalev, Maksim Mikhailov, Valentin Karyagin, Maksim Galochkin, Mikhail Iskritskiy, Sergey Loguntsov, and Dmitry Pleshevskiy)

September 2023 US-UK coordinated joint sanctions designating eleven additional Russian nationals as TrickBot members. The cluster represents one of the most formally-attributed organized cyber-criminal clusters with sustained sanctions action and indictments at the individual- operator level across multiple years. The cluster has demonstrated sophisticated organizational structure exposed in detail by the February 27, 2022 ContiLeaks, an unprecedented internal-chat- log leak of approximately 60,000 Conti internal communications published by a Ukrainian-aligned cluster member after Conti's February 25, 2022 public-statement supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. ContiLeaks documented the cluster's HR-style personnel management, internal training programs, project- management workflows, financial-management infrastructure, and hierarchical management structure (including specific operator identities, salary structures, and operational decision-making). Following sustained Western law-enforcement pressure and the ContiLeaks operational exposure, the Conti brand was officially shut down in May-June 2022 and personnel reorganized into multiple successor brands and clusters.

Motivations
financial_gain, financially_motivated, cybercrime, banking_fraud, banking_trojan_operations, ransomware_deployment, extortion, double_extortion, cryptocurrency_theft, business_email_compromise, access_as_a_service, initial_access_broker_operations
Sectors
Regions

Detection Blind Spots

60 techniques
Across this actor’s 60 mapped techniques, the share covered by each detection layer. Low bars are where you’d be blind if this actor targeted you.
Behavioral / log (Sigma)57/60 · 95%
Analytics (MITRE CAR)29/60 · 48%
Runtime / container (Falco)7/60 · 11%
File / malware (YARA)0/60 · 0%
Network (Suricata/Snort)16/60 · 26%
Vuln scan (Nuclei)0/60 · 0%

Atomic Test Plan

30 techniques
Runnable Atomic Red Team tests covering this actor’s mapped techniques - validate your detections against this specific adversary. Cross-reference the blind spots above. For authorized lab / purple-team use. Open the full builder

Tools Used

2 mapped
Other tooling / TTPs (curation, not ATT&CK-mapped):
MEGA NZMSHTASHARPHOUNDSPLASHTOP ABUSE
Intelligence Graph · click any node to traverse
CVETechnique ActorTool Family
drag to reposition · click any node to traverse · button top-right enlarges
External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves
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