Thegentlemen is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group who has targeted over 320 victims in 17 countries across a year, with its most active sectors being Manufacturing, Technology, and Healthcare.
Who Thegentlemen is
The Gentlemen is a RaaS group that emerged in July–August 2025, rapidly claiming over 320 victims across 17+ countries by offering affiliates a 90% revenue share, deploying a Go-based locker against Windows, Linux, NAS, and BSD systems; a compromised C2 server in 2026 revealed more than 1,570 linked victims.
Recorded activity
Disclosures attributed to Thegentlemen in this database run from September 2025 to October 2026, totalling 1,077 victims — 4.6% of everything tracked here. Thegentlemen has listed victims in 92 countries in this database, most often United States, followed by United Kingdom and Brazil. The sectors appearing most in its listings are Manufacturing, Technology, Healthcare.
How Thegentlemen is documented to operate
Valid Accounts
T1078
Stealth
Persistence
Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Compromised credentials may be used to bypass access controls placed on various resources on systems within the network and may even be used for persistent access to remote systems and externally available services, such as VPNs, Outlook Web Access, network devices, and remote desktop. Compromised credentials may also grant an adversary increased privilege to specific systems or access to restricted areas of the network.
Mitigations:
Application Developer Guidance, User Training, Password Policies, User Account Management, Privileged Account Management, Multi-factor Authentication
MITRE ATT&CK reference
External Remote Services
T1133
Persistence
Initial Access
Adversaries may leverage external-facing remote services to initially access and/or persist within a network. Remote services such as VPNs, Citrix, and other access mechanisms allow users to connect to internal enterprise network resources from external locations. There are often remote service gateways that manage connections and credential authentication for these services. Services such as Windows Remote Management and VNC can also be used externally. Access to Valid Accounts to use the service is often a requirement, which could be obtained through credential pharming or by obtaining the credentials from users after compromising the enterprise network.
Mitigations:
Limit Access to Resource Over Network, Restrict Web-Based Content, Network Segmentation, Multi-factor Authentication, Disable or Remove Feature or Program
MITRE ATT&CK reference
Exploit Public-Facing Application
T1190
Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network. The weakness in the system can be a software bug, a temporary glitch, or a misconfiguration. Exploited applications are often websites/web servers, but can also include databases (like SQL), standard services (like SMB or SSH), network device administration and management protocols (like SNMP and Smart Install), and any other system with Internet-accessible open sockets. On ESXi infrastructure, adversaries may exploit exposed OpenSLP services; they may alternatively exploit exposed VMware vCenter servers.
Mitigations:
Vulnerability Scanning, Limit Access to Resource Over Network, Filter Network Traffic, Network Segmentation, Privileged Account Management, Application Isolation and Sandboxing
MITRE ATT&CK reference
Phishing
T1566
Initial Access
Adversaries may send phishing messages to gain access to victim systems. All forms of phishing are electronically delivered social engineering. Phishing can be targeted, known as spearphishing. In spearphishing, a specific individual, company, or industry will be targeted by the adversary. More generally, adversaries can conduct non-targeted phishing, such as in mass malware spam campaigns. Adversaries may send victims emails containing malicious attachments or links, typically to execute malicious code on victim systems. Phishing may also be conducted via third-party services, like social media platforms.
Mitigations:
Network Intrusion Prevention, Restrict Web-Based Content, User Training, Antivirus/Antimalware, Software Configuration, Audit
MITRE ATT&CK reference
Windows Management Instrumentation
T1047
Execution
Adversaries may abuse Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to execute malicious commands and payloads. WMI is designed for programmers and is the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows systems. WMI is an administration feature that provides a uniform environment to access Windows system components. The WMI service enables both local and remote access, though the latter is facilitated by Remote Services such as Distributed Component Object Model and Windows Remote Management. Remote WMI over DCOM operates using port 135, whereas WMI over WinRM operates over port 5985 when using HTTP and 5986 for HTTPS.
Mitigations:
Execution Prevention, Behavior Prevention on Endpoint, User Account Management, Privileged Account Management
MITRE ATT&CK reference
Command and Scripting Interpreter
T1059
Execution
Adversaries may abuse command and script interpreters to execute commands, scripts, or binaries. These interfaces and languages provide ways of interacting with computer systems and are a common feature across many different platforms. Most systems come with some built-in command-line interface and scripting capabilities, for example, macOS and Linux distributions include some flavor of Unix Shell while Windows installations include the Windows Command Shell and PowerShell. There are also cross-platform interpreters such as Python, as well as those commonly associated with client applications such as JavaScript and Visual Basic.
Mitigations:
Restrict Web-Based Content, Limit Software Installation, Execution Prevention, Code Signing, Behavior Prevention on Endpoint, Privileged Account Management
MITRE ATT&CK reference
Software Deployment Tools
T1072
Execution
Lateral Movement
Adversaries may gain access to and use centralized software suites installed within an enterprise to execute commands and move laterally through the network. Configuration management and software deployment applications may be used in an enterprise network or cloud environment for routine administration purposes. These systems may also be integrated into CI/CD pipelines. Examples of such solutions include: SCCM, HBSS, Altiris, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Intune, Azure Arc, and GCP Deployment Manager. Access to network-wide or enterprise-wide endpoint management software may enable an adversary to achieve remote code execution on all connected systems.
Mitigations:
Remote Data Storage, Limit Software Installation, User Training, Network Segmentation, Password Policies, User Account Management
MITRE ATT&CK reference
MITRE ATT&CK techniques attributed to Thegentlemen across its recorded activity. They describe the group overall, not any single incident.
Vulnerabilities Thegentlemen is recorded exploiting
8 of these 8 are in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, 6 of them recorded by CISA as used in ransomware campaigns. CVEs attributed to Thegentlemen in threat intelligence reporting. Patching these does not by itself rule the group out, and their presence here is not evidence of how any single organisation was reached.
Tooling observed in Thegentlemen operations
- DumpBrowserSecrets
- Hydra
- KslDump
- KslKatz
- XenAllPasswordPro
- EDRStartupHinder
- GFreeze
- GLinker
- ADFind
- BloodHound
- Censys
- CertiHound
Software reported in use by Thegentlemen. Most are legitimate administration or transfer utilities; their presence in an environment is a signal to investigate, not proof of compromise.
Indicators of compromise
- 88e824ea42dc271f4992957584b57d64
- ff709591615a26f037a465ce97cc59d6
- 1ecaf7098bedaa4ffae0fff3e077f937
- 598b222fe1d12453639dc14b390b3fa9
- 5f319c7e83b8daa6836b8ae674c8e0e6
- 6add66a89721e2b7d817ba0d0f0d660e
- 025fc0976c548fb5a880c83ea3eb21a5f23c5d53c4e51e862bb893c11adf712a
- 1334f0189a8e6dbc48456fa4b482c5726ab7609f7fa652fcc4c1a96f2334436f
- 1af419b36a5edefef387409e2b3248c9223f7dc49a4f7b15ea095d371c3a70b2
- 22b38dad7da097ea03aa28d0614164cd25fafeb1383dbc15047e34c8050f6f67
- 24ac3588fb8cfbff63b7fdfcbc7dec1f3c60e54e6f949dd69d68e89e0c89d966
- 2ed9494e9b7b68415b4eb151c922c82c0191294d0aa443dd2cb5133e6bfe3d5d
- c12c4d58541cc4f75ae19b65295a52c559570054
- c0979ec20b87084317d1bfa50405f7149c3b5c5f
- df249727c12741ca176d5f1ccba3ce188a546d28
- e00293ce0eb534874efd615ae590cf6aa3858ba4
- 193.143.1.142
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Showing a sample of 47 MD5, 34 SHA256, 4 SHA1, 1 IP, 2 EMAIL on file. Hashes and network indicators published for Thegentlemen. Leak-site addresses are deliberately excluded. Indicators age quickly — treat a match as a starting point for investigation, and an absence of matches as no assurance.
YARA detection rules
thegentlemen.yar
/*
thegentlemen ransomware
*/
rule thegentlemen_Ransomnote
{
meta:
author = "ransomware.live"
family = "ransomware.thegentlemen"
description = "Detects thegentlemen ransomware ransom note or artifact"
date = "2026-05-04"
severity = 7
score = 70
strings:
$name1 = "thegentlemen" ascii nocase
$name2 = "THEGENTLEMEN" ascii
$onion = "thegentlemen.onion" ascii nocase
condition:
any of them
}
Community-contributed rules for Thegentlemen, reproduced as published. Test them against your own corpus before relying on them: rule quality and false-positive behaviour vary by author.
