The Samas ransomware group is a relatively obscure threat actor that first emerged in February 2018, operating with apparent financial motivations through ransomware deployment targeting critical infrastructure sectors. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented in public threat intelligence reporting, with limited information available regarding their operational structure or potential ransomware-as-a-service relationships. Detailed attack methodology for Samas remains poorly documented in open-source intelligence, though like other ransomware operations of the era, they likely employed common initial access vectors and encryption techniques to compromise target networks. The group demonstrated a specific targeting preference for U.S. government facilities, with at least one documented victim falling within this critical infrastructure sector, though specific campaign details and ransom demands have not been publicly disclosed by major security vendors or law enforcement agencies. Current operational status of the Samas group is unclear due to limited public reporting and apparent low-volume activity, suggesting they may have ceased operations, rebranded, or remain dormant. The group has been linked to 1 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on February 16, 2018. The operation is currently inactive.
Also tracked as: Samas-Samsam, samsam.exe, MIKOPONI.exe, RikiRafael.exe.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Government Facilities sector, which has 84 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Davidson County is reported in United States, a country with 7,392 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.
