Agrius

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

Agrius

Pink Sandstorm

Agrius is an Iran-linked threat group that runs destructive operations against targets in Israel, the Middle East and beyond, often hiding behind hacktivist and ransomware personas. Its intrusions wipe IT, virtualization and backup systems to cripple recovery, with ransomware sometimes used as a cover for data destruction rather than for genuine extortion.

Iran

Government / Critical infrastructure

First seen

2020

Latest IOC

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Names and aliases

Group profile

Attack lifecycle

Malware and tooling

IOCs

Notable campaigns

NAMES AND ALIASES

Agrius, Pink Sandstorm and Black Shadow

Agrius is tracked under several vendor names tied to its destructive operations. It maps to one entry among the Iran-linked actors we track, and its Israel-focused, destructive profile overlaps with personas like Handala.

GROUP PROFILE

Destruction disguised as hacktivism

Agrius is a destructive Iran-linked actor. Rather than pursuing profit, it aims to disrupt and destroy, and it frequently operates under invented hacktivist personas to obscure state sponsorship and shape the narrative around its attacks.

Our record places its origin as Iran and ties it to destructive operations against government and critical-infrastructure targets. Gambit Security linked a March 2026 destructive intrusion, claimed by the "Ababil of Minab" persona, to Iran's MOIS through infrastructure tied to the Black Shadow group.

The group's tradecraft centers on wiping data by deleting virtual machines in vCenter and destroying Windows partitions and backups, using tooling such as FileFiend to maximize recovery damage.

Facts:

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Victims reported in our records and posts:

ATTACK LIFECYCLE

Access into data destruction

The stages below come from Agrius, Black Shadow and Pink Sandstorm activity in posts we track on our IOC Hunter feed.

Initial Access

Spear-phishing remains the front door. In the 2026 campaign Hunt.io tracked as Operation Neusploit, APT28 sent convincing spear-phishing from already-compromised government accounts and abused a Microsoft Office security bypass (CVE-2026-21509) to kick off a fileless chain. A separate June 2026 cluster delivered the LameHug malware through spear-phishing ZIP archives using double-extension lures.

Initial Access

MALWARE AND TOOLING

FileFiend and destructive tooling

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

FileFiend-linked flaw

CVE-2026-21509

A Microsoft Office security bypass used to open the fileless chain in Operation Neusploit, and again in the PixyNetLoader intrusion chain. Both campaigns paired the exploit with spear-phishing from compromised accounts rather than mass exploitation.

Agrius

IOCS FROM HUNT.IO PLATFORM

Latest IOCs

We currently track - IP indicators, - hosts, and - SHA256 hashes for Akira across - intelligence posts, with the most recent indicator dated -. The sample below is limited to indicators from the latest posts. It is not the full set.

Showing a sample of recent indicators

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Agrius

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete

Agrius

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

The LA Metro destructive intrusion

Recent reporting tracks the group's destructive 2026 activity.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.