VERY IMPORTANT

In April and May 2026, investigations revealed two incidents involving The Gentlemen ransomware-as-a-service operation, which has claimed over 400 victims across 70 countries since mid-2025. Both incidents demonstrated common tactics including Scheduled Tasks, PowerShell commands, and defense evasion techniques such as clearing Security, System, and Application Event Logs, disabling Microsoft Defender, and adding antivirus exclusions. A leaked internal database in early May exposed the operation's infrastructure, affiliate structure, and targeting of vulnerabilities like CVE-2024-55591. The attacks showed threat actors using RDP connections, disguised executables, SOCKS proxy connections for persistence, and domain-wide deployment via NETLOGON shares. Despite attempts to evade detection, sufficient forensic telemetry remained for analysis, revealing workstation names previously associated with Qilin ransomware and Lazarus infrastructure.