Disclosure context

About apt73

APT73 is a recently emerged ransomware group that began operations in April 2024, with financial motivation as their primary driver based on their targeting patterns across multiple high-value sectors. The group has demonstrated rapid growth in their operational tempo, accumulating 78 documented victims within their first months of activity. Their targeting methodology shows a preference for English-speaking markets and major economies, with the United Kingdom and United States representing their primary focus areas, followed by significant activity in India, Brazil, and France. The group exhibits a clear preference for high-value sectors including business services, technology, financial services, and healthcare organizations, suggesting a calculated approach to victim selection based on potential payment capability and operational impact. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from major threat intelligence sources, specific details regarding their initial access vectors, tooling, encryption methods, or organizational structure remain largely unconfirmed by authoritative sources such as CISA, FBI, or established security research firms. The group's current operational status appears active based on the timeline of their emergence, though comprehensive analysis of their capabilities and infrastructure requires additional intelligence gathering and documentation by security researchers. The group has been linked to 141 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on April 22, 2024; most recent post April 27, 2026. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Eraleign.

Timeline of this disclosure

April 27, 2026ires.ma listed by apt73on the group's public leak site

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Not Found sector, which has 4,859 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, ires.ma is reported in MA, a country with 6 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

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.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Institut Royal des Études Stratégiques

listed as ires.ma · Claimed by apt73 · listed 23 days ago

23d

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

Listed
Apr 27, 2026
Data leaked

At a glance

Group: apt73
Status: Data leaked
Country: MA
Sector: Not Found
Listed on leak site: Apr 27, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

L'Institut Royal des Études Stratégiques (IRES) is a state-owned strategic analysis center in Morocco, operating under the authority of the King. Its mission is to conduct strategic studies and analyses on national and international issues, covering domestic structural questions, Morocco's foreign relations, and global strategic topics to inform high-level government decision-making.

Industry: Government Strategic Research & Policy Analysis
Address: Rabat, Morocco

Attack summary

Severity: critical — IRES is a state-owned institution directly serving the Moroccan monarchy with strategic and national security analysis. Data exfiltration from such an entity likely involves sensitive government policy, intelligence assessments, and strategic reports, constituting a critical national-security-level breach with confirmed data publication.

APT73 claims to have attacked IRES and has published data (disclosed status: data_published), asserting access to internal data of this Moroccan royal state-owned analytical institution. No ransom amount or specific data volume was stated.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Internal government strategic analyses
Policy research documents
Organizational data
Potentially classified national/international strategic reports

What the group claims

Institut Royal des Études Stratégiques is a state—owned analytical center in Morocco, which i...

Sources

Victim siteires.ma
Leak posthttp://basherq53eniermxovo3bkduw5qqq5bkqcml3qictfmamgvmzovykyqd.onion/page_company.php?id=144

Source

Indexed 23 days ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.