Pro-Palestinian hacktivist group Handala targets Stryker in global disruption

Pro-Palestinian hacktivist group Handala claims responsibility for a disruptive cyberattack against medical technology firm Stryker, with the group stating that it wiped more than 200,000 servers, mobile devices and other systems and exfiltrated about 50TB of corporate data. The incident allegedly caused a global outage, affecting offices across 79 countries, and led to a defaced Entra login page and widespread disruption to staff devices and internal services.

Reports from Security Affairs note that Stryker employees in multiple countries confirmed devices were remotely wiped, and that the company is restoring systems amid a global outage. Handala is described in the article as appearing to operate as a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group, though it is widely seen as a front for Iran-backed Void Manticore, and the piece links the attack to ongoing cyber operations connected to the Iran conflict.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Stryker’s stock fell 3.2% as the attack disrupted its Microsoft environment and affected client devices and servers; Stryker had reported 2024 global sales of $22.6 billion and more than 53,000 employees. according to The Wall Street Journal.