G1040: Play
Play is a ransomware group that has been active since at least 2022 deploying Playcrypt ransomware against the business, government, critical infrastructure, healthcare, and media sectors in North America, South America, and Europe. Play actors employ a double-extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data, and are presumed by security researchers to operate as a closed group.[1][2]
Security context for executives and security teams
G1040: Play describes [Play](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1040) is a ransomware group that has been active since at least 2022 deploying [Playcrypt](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S1162) ransomware against the business, government, critical infrastructure, healthcare, and media sectors in North America, South America, and Europe. [Play](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1040) actors employ a double-extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data, and are presumed by security researchers to operate as a closed group.(Ci...
Executive priority
G1040: Play is an official MITRE ATT&CK group. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate G1040: Play by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (the platforms named in the official object), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
Detection direction
- Validate whether G1040: Play appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Play
Play is a ransomware group that has been active since at least 2022 deploying Playcrypt ransomware against the business, government, critical infrastructure, healthcare, and media sectors in North America, South America, and Europe. Play actors employ a double-extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data, and are presumed by security researchers to operate as a closed group.[1][2]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
Groups, software, and campaigns
S0359: Nltest
S0552: AdFind
S0029: PsExec
S0363: Empire
Empire is an open-source, cross-platform remote administration and post-exploitation framework that is publicly available on GitHub. While the tool itself is primarily written in Python, the post-exploitation agents are written in pure PowerShell for Windows and Python for Linux/macOS. Empire was one of five tools singled out by a joint report on public hacking tools being widely used by adversaries.[1][2][3]
S0645: Wevtutil
S0154: Cobalt Strike
Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.[1]
In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz.[1]
S1162: Playcrypt
Playcrypt is a ransomware that has been used by Play since at least 2022 in attacks against against the business, government, critical infrastructure, healthcare, and media sectors in North America, South America, and Europe. Playcrypt derives its name from adding the .play extension to encrypted files and has overlap with tactics and tools associated with Hive and Nokoyawa ransomware and infrastructure associated with Quantum ransomware.[1][2][3]
S0521: BloodHound
BloodHound is an Active Directory (AD) reconnaissance tool that can reveal hidden relationships and identify attack paths within an AD environment.[1][2][3]
S0002: Mimikatz
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(3)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20.0 | 1.0 | Current bundle | 2f3b9f7e6b99… | ||
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Older bundle | 2f3b9f7e6b99… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | 0bd42175ffe5… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]CISA Play Ransomware Advisory December 2023
CISA. (2023, December 18). #StopRansomware: Play Ransomware AA23-352A. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
Open source URL - [2]Trend Micro Ransomware Spotlight Play July 2023
Trend Micro Research. (2023, July 21). Ransomware Spotlight: Play. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
Open source URL - [3]mitre-attackG1040Open source URL
Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.