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MITRE ATT&CK® Malware

S0616: DEATHRANSOM

DEATHRANSOM is ransomware written in C that has been used since at least 2020, and has potential overlap with FIVEHANDS and HELLOKITTY.[1]

EnterpriseS0616MalwareObject v1.0Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

S0616: DEATHRANSOM describes [DEATHRANSOM](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0616) is ransomware written in C that has been used since at least 2020, and has potential overlap with [FIVEHANDS](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0618) and [HELLOKITTY](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0617).(Citation: FireEye FiveHands April 2021)

Executive priority

S0616: DEATHRANSOM is an official MITRE ATT&CK software. 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 S0616: DEATHRANSOM by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (Windows), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.

Likely telemetry

  • Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
  • Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry

Detection direction

  • Validate whether S0616: DEATHRANSOM 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.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

DEATHRANSOM

DEATHRANSOM is ransomware written in C that has been used since at least 2020, and has potential overlap with FIVEHANDS and HELLOKITTY.[1]

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

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.

ATT&CK relationship table

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.

9 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1486Data Encrypted for Impact

DEATHRANSOM can use public and private key pair encryption to encrypt files for ransom payment.[1]

EnterpriseT1071.001Web ProtocolsSub-technique

DEATHRANSOM can use HTTPS to download files.[1]

EnterpriseT1490Inhibit System Recovery

DEATHRANSOM can delete volume shadow copies on compromised hosts.[1]

EnterpriseT1083File and Directory Discovery

DEATHRANSOM can use loop operations to enumerate directories on a compromised host.[1]

EnterpriseT1614.001System Language DiscoverySub-technique

Some versions of DEATHRANSOM have performed language ID and keyboard layout checks; if either of these matched Russian, Kazakh, Belarusian, Ukrainian or Tatar DEATHRANSOM would exit.[1]

EnterpriseT1105Ingress Tool Transfer

DEATHRANSOM can download files to a compromised host.[1]

EnterpriseT1047Windows Management Instrumentation

DEATHRANSOM has the ability to use WMI to delete volume shadow copies.[1]

EnterpriseT1680Local Storage Discovery

DEATHRANSOM can enumerate logical drives on a target system.[1]

EnterpriseT1135Network Share Discovery

DEATHRANSOM has the ability to use loop operations to enumerate network resources.[1]

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

Change history

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.

ATT&CK release
19.2
Object version
1.0
Created
Modified
Raw hash
65fd4854579e894c...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.21.0Current bundle65fd4854579e…
19.11.0Older bundle65fd4854579e…
Raw source

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.

Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    FireEye FiveHands April 2021

    McLellan, T. and Moore, J. et al. (2021, April 29). UNC2447 SOMBRAT and FIVEHANDS Ransomware: A Sophisticated Financial Threat. Retrieved June 2, 2021.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    mitre-attackS0616
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

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.