An Iran-linked hacker group has claimed responsibility for cyberattacks against two US companies: medical equipment supplier Stryker and digital payments platform Verifone.
On Wednesday, the group — called Handala Hack — justified the first attack on social network X by citing Stryker’s ties to Israel, as the industrial conglomerate acquired an Israeli company in 2019. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Stryker reported a “cybersecurity incident” that caused “global disruption” to Microsoft technology applications within the company. While it believes “the incident is contained,” the Michigan-based firm said the timeline to restore all functions “has not yet been established.”
The Handala Hack group presented the action as retaliation for a bombing at a primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, on February 28, which killed more than 150 people according to Iranian authorities. The attack is believed to have been caused by a coordination error by US armed forces when striking an adjacent Iranian military base, according to preliminary findings from an internal military investigation published by The New York Times on Wednesday. President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied US military responsibility.
The collective also claimed responsibility for a separate cyberattack against electronic payments company Verifone, which told AFP it found “no evidence of an incident related to this claim” and had experienced “no service disruption for its customers.”
The Handala Hack collective rose to prominence in late 2023. Named after a symbolic figure of the Palestinian people, it is described by cybersecurity experts as an Iran-backed group that typically targets Israeli organisations or entities with links to Israel, employing methods ranging from data theft and website defacement to ransomware attacks — malicious software that exploits security vulnerabilities and threatens victims with the destruction or blocking of access to critical data or systems until a ransom is paid.
