RomCom

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

RomCom

RomCom is a Russia-aligned group that blends cybercrime with espionage, targeting Ukraine, NATO-allied countries and sectors like finance, defense, manufacturing and logistics. It stands out for chaining zero-day vulnerabilities in Firefox, Windows and WinRAR to deliver the RomCom RAT and related implants with little or no user interaction.

Country:

Russia

Government / Defense / Finance

First seen

2022

Latest IOC

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

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

RomCom, Storm-0978 and UAT-5647

RomCom is tracked under several vendor names across its criminal and espionage activity. It maps to one entry among the Russia-based actors we profile, and its blend of ransomware and intrusion overlaps with Russian eCrime crews like Wizard Spider.

GROUP PROFILE

Zero-days across cybercrime and espionage

RomCom operates on both sides of the line, running financially motivated intrusions and state-aligned espionage. Since late 2023 it has shifted toward a global espionage posture while keeping ransomware in its toolkit.

Our record places its origin as Russia and ties it to activity against government, defense, finance and logistics targets in Ukraine, Europe and North America. The group has been linked to Industrial Spy, Underground and Cuba ransomware in its history.

Its defining tradecraft is zero-day exploitation: Firefox and Windows flaws chained for no-click installs, and a WinRAR path-traversal zero-day used to hide malicious files in archives delivered by spear-phishing.

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

Zero-day chains into the RomCom RAT

The stages below come from RomCom and UAT-5647 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

RomCom RAT, SnipBot and the implant family

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

Firefox, Windows and WinRAR zero-days

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.

CVE-2026-21509

RECENT {{name}} IOCS

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

Get the complete 8Base IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete 8Base IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

WinRAR and Firefox zero-day campaigns

Recent reporting tracks RomCom's zero-day exploitation.

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.

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.

Track {{name}} across campaigns, IOCs and infrastructure

This page shows a sample of recent indicators and recent campaigns. Sign up free to pivot through

Track {{name}} across campaigns, IOCs and infrastructure

This page shows a sample of recent indicators and recent campaigns. Sign up free to pivot through