Wizard Spider

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

Wizard Spider

TrickBot

Wizard Spider is a Russian eCrime group behind some of the most damaging malware of the past decade, including the TrickBot banking trojan, the Ryuk and Conti ransomware families, BazarLoader and Diavol. It pioneered big-game hunting, pairing commodity loaders with targeted ransomware against enterprises, and its members and tooling seeded multiple successor operations.

Russia

eCrime / Ransomware

First seen

2016

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

Wizard Spider, FIN12 and the TrickBot LLC cluster

Wizard Spider is tracked under many vendor names tied to its malware and successor crews. It maps to one entry among the eCrime groups we track, and its ransomware lineage runs directly into crews like Conti.

GROUP PROFILE

Big-game hunting from TrickBot to Conti

Wizard Spider is a financially motivated eCrime operation. It built an assembly line from initial infection to ransomware: commodity loaders for access, hands-on-keyboard intrusion, and targeted encryption of enterprise networks for maximum leverage.

Our record places its origin as Russia and ties it to big-game ransomware. The group evolved from wire fraud via TrickBot into Ryuk and later Conti, with exfiltration tooling like Sidoh supporting double extortion.

Its tradecraft combines phishing-delivered loaders (BazarLoader, TrickBot), Cobalt Strike for lateral movement, and Wake-on-LAN and LAN enumeration to reach and encrypt as many hosts as possible, including Diavol in some intrusions.

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

Loaders and Cobalt Strike into Ryuk

The stages below come from Wizard Spider 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

TrickBot, Ryuk, Conti and Diavol

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

Wizard Spider

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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Wizard Spider

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete

Wizard Spider

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

From Ryuk to Diavol and beyond

Reporting tracks the group's ransomware lineage and tooling.

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.