Pay2Key is a relatively obscure ransomware group that emerged in December 2020 with a focused targeting approach primarily against Israeli organizations, suggesting potential geopolitical motivations alongside financial gain. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented by major security firms, though their concentrated focus on Israeli entities across information technology, telecommunications, and legal sectors indicates possible nation-state backing or politically motivated cybercriminal activity rather than operating as a traditional ransomware-as-a-service model. Limited public documentation exists regarding their specific attack methodologies, initial access vectors, or technical capabilities, though their successful compromise of at least seven documented victims across critical infrastructure and professional services sectors demonstrates operational competency. The group's notable campaigns have primarily involved targeting Israeli organizations, with security researchers noting their emergence during a period of heightened regional tensions, though specific details about ransom demands, victim names, or law enforcement responses remain largely unpublished in major threat intelligence reports. Current intelligence suggests Pay2Key has maintained a low profile with minimal public reporting on recent activities, making their operational status uncertain as of recent assessments. The group has been linked to 7 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 13, 2020; most recent post September 9, 2021. The operation is currently inactive.
Sector and geography
This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Information Technology sector, which has 69 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Habana Labs is reported in Israel, a country with 156 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.
If your organisation is affected
A listing by Pay2Key means Habana Labs 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.
- Report the incident to your national CERT, CERT-IL (Israel), as required for your jurisdiction.
- Monitor for the data appearing on Pay2Key'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.
