Stormous is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in March 2022, operating primarily with financial motivations and has claimed responsibility for attacks against at least 165 victims across multiple countries and sectors. The group's country of origin remains unclear from publicly documented sources, though their operational patterns suggest they may operate as an independent entity rather than a established ransomware-as-a-service model. Limited public documentation from major security firms indicates the group employs common ransomware tactics, though specific details about their initial access vectors, encryption methods, and data exfiltration practices have not been extensively detailed in reports from CISA, FBI, or major threat intelligence providers. Their targeting appears geographically diverse with a focus on Spain, the United States, France, UAE, and Brazil, while showing particular interest in technology, hospitality and tourism, government, and business services sectors, though many of their victims span unspecified industries. As of current reporting, Stormous appears to remain an active threat, though the limited public documentation suggests they operate as a lower-tier ransomware group compared to more prominent families that receive extensive coverage from major security research organizations. The group has been linked to 245 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 22, 2022; most recent post July 1, 2026. The operation is currently active.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Technology sector, which has 3,549 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Barid soft is reported in Iran, a country with 11 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
If your organisation is affected
A listing by Stormous means Barid soft appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.
- Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
- Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
- Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
- Monitor for the data appearing on Stormous's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.
How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.
