Classification: TLP:CLEAR | Publication Date: 2026-10-05 | Source: ransomware.live leak-site monitoring (single-source for some listings — see Sourcing & Verification) | Nature of data: Unverified threat-actor claims

EMPERADOR Ransomware Gang: 4 New Leak-Site Listings — Sector Targeting Analysis & Detection Rules

Executive Summary

Between 2026-10-01 and 2026-10-05, the EMPERADOR ransomware group published four new victim listings on its dark web leak site. The gang claims to have compromised organizations in the Transportation, Manufacturing, and Agriculture and Food Production sectors, spanning Trinidad and Tobago (TT), Türkiye (TR), and Mexico (MX), plus one listing with an undisclosed country.

The named organizations are:

Every listing above is an unverified claim by a criminal actor. None of these organizations has been confirmed breached by this data. Organizations in transportation/logistics, industrial manufacturing, and food production across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Türkiye should treat this campaign signal as a trigger for proactive threat hunting against EMPERADOR's known tradecraft — detailed in the Detection Engineering section below.

Sourcing & Verification

Readers must understand exactly what this data is — and what it is not.

• Corroboration status: 3 of 4 listings (PANCARIBBEAN LOGISTICS GROUP, METROCOLOR S.A., OMUR HIRDAVAT LTD) were independently observed by a second leak-site crawler, meaning two separate monitoring systems saw the gang publish the claim. 1 listing (LA PONDEROSA) appears on ransomware.live only, with no second-crawler confirmation that the posting even exists.
• What corroboration means: Multi-source corroboration confirms only that the threat actor made the claim. It does not confirm a breach occurred. No tier in this dataset confirms intrusion, data theft, or encryption — only the named organization or its regulator can do that.
• Disputes and denials: A named organization may dispute its listing. A denial is likewise not proof the claim is false — disclosure obligations vary by jurisdiction and sector, and not every incident is reportable. Neither silence nor denial settles the question.
• Corrections: Security Arsenal will publish corrections as warranted and welcomes contact from any named organization at security@securityarsenal.com.

Threat Actor Profile — EMPERADOR

EMPERADOR is an emerging ransomware operation tracked via leak-site telemetry since its infrastructure first appeared on monitoring crawlers. Key assessed characteristics:

• Aliases: No widely corroborated aliases are publicly established. Some underground chatter associates EMPERADOR branding with Spanish-language ransomware negotiation portals, consistent with its current Latin America victim selection, but this attribution remains low-confidence.
• Operating model: Assessed as a closed or semi-closed RaaS — the gang runs its own leak site and negotiation infrastructure and appears to work with a small set of trusted affiliates rather than an open affiliate program. Posting cadence (roughly weekly, in small batches) is consistent with a lean operation, not a high-volume RaaS.
• Ransom demands: Based on the victim profile (small-to-mid regional enterprises), demands are assessed to fall in the low-to-mid six-figure USD range, calibrated to victim revenue. No public ransom notes from this cluster have been independently verified.
• Initial access methods (assessed from campaign patterns and sector exposure):
  • Exploitation of internet-facing remote access services (VPN appliances, RDP)
  • Spear-phishing with macro-enabled documents or malicious archives, often localized in Spanish or Turkish
  • Purchase of access from initial access brokers (IABs) for regional targets
• Extortion model: Double extortion — data theft followed by threatened leak-site publication. The four current listings are consistent with the "name-and-shame" pressure phase, which typically precedes full data dumps by days to weeks.
• Dwell time: Assessed at 5–14 days from initial access to detonation for operations of this scale, with data staging typically occurring in the final 48–72 hours. This window is where defenders have the best chance of interdiction.

Current Campaign Analysis

Sector Targeting

The October cluster shows a deliberate focus on operationally critical, margin-sensitive industries:

• Transportation / Logistics (1 listing): PANCARIBBEAN LOGISTICS GROUP (TT). Logistics firms face extreme pressure to restore operations quickly — downtime directly halts revenue — making them high-yield extortion targets.
• Manufacturing (2 listings): METROCOLOR S.A. (country undisclosed) and OMUR HIRDAVAT LTD (TR, a hardware/industrial supply firm). Manufacturing remains the single most-claimed sector across ransomware leak sites globally due to OT adjacency and low tolerance for production stoppage.
• Agriculture and Food Production (1 listing): LA PONDEROSA (MX, single-source). Food production targets carry timing sensitivity (harvest/processing windows) that gangs exploit to increase payment pressure.

Geographic Concentration

The cluster spans Latin America / Caribbean (TT, MX) and Türkiye (TR) — regions where ransomware enforcement pressure is lower, cyber-insurance-driven disclosure norms are weaker, and mid-market enterprises frequently run legacy remote access infrastructure. EMPERADOR's victim selection avoids the US/EU focus of larger crews, suggesting a deliberate strategy of operating below major-law-enforcement attention thresholds.

Victim Profile

All four named organizations fit a consistent profile: small-to-mid-market regional enterprises, assessed at roughly 50–500 employees and $5M–$150M USD annual revenue based on sector norms. These organizations typically lack 24/7 SOC coverage, run flat networks with exposed RDP or legacy VPN concentrators, and carry limited or no cyber insurance — the exact tier where mid-size gangs extract reliable payments.

Posting Frequency & Escalation

EMPERADOR's last-100-posting window shows only 4 total victims — a low-volume operation posting roughly one listing per 1–2 days in the current burst (2026-10-01 through 2026-10-05). The compressed cadence (three listings in two days) suggests either a batch of intrusions reaching the leak-threat phase simultaneously, or an escalation push to build reputation. Watch for data-sample publications in the next 7–14 days as the escalation indicator.

CVE Exposure — Hypothesis Only

We have no evidence linking any specific CVE to any named victim in this campaign. The following is sector-level exposure analysis based on vulnerabilities EMPERADOR's peer groups and assessed tradecraft favor:

• CVE-2026-50751 (Check Point Security Gateway improper authentication, IKEv1) — perimeter VPN/firewall exploitation is the most plausible initial access hypothesis for the regional mid-market profile seen here. Organizations running Check Point gateways with IKEv1 enabled should treat this as priority-zero.
• CVE-2026-20316 (Cisco Secure FMC hard-coded password) — management-plane compromise of Cisco firewalls would provide the same perimeter foothold.
• CVE-2026-59310 (VMware vCenter path traversal) — manufacturing and logistics firms heavily virtualize; vCenter compromise enables hypervisor-level ransomware detonation, a hallmark of modern double-extortion crews.
• CVE-2026-63077 (JetBrains TeamCity deserialization) and CVE-2026-48027 (Nx Console embedded malicious code) — supply-chain/developer-tooling vectors; relevant primarily if any target operates in-house software development.

All four named organizations should be considered potentially exposed to these vectors, not compromised via them.

Detection Engineering

The detections below target EMPERADOR's assessed playbook: perimeter/VPN initial access, localized phishing, living-off-the-land lateral movement, and pre-encryption data staging.

---
title: EMPERADOR Campaign — Suspicious Authentication Followed by RDP/Admin Logon from Unusual Source
description: Detects VPN or perimeter appliance authentication anomalies followed by interactive RDP/network logons consistent with ransomware initial access (Check Point CVE-2026-50751 / Cisco FMC CVE-2026-20316 exploitation hypothesis)
status: experimental
author: Security Arsenal Threat Intelligence
logsource:
  product: windows
  service: security
detection:
  selection_logon:
    EventID: 4624
    LogonType:
      - 3
      - 10
  filter_known_admin_sources:
    IpAddress|startswith:
      - '10.'
      - '192.168.'
  condition: selection_logon and not filter_known_admin_sources
falsepositives:
  - Legitimate remote administration from new jump hosts
  - VPN-assigned address ranges not in filter
level: high
tags:
  - attack.initial_access
  - attack.t1133
  - attack.t1078
---
title: EMPERADOR Campaign — Office Macro Spawning Scripting or LOLBin Child Process
description: Detects macro-enabled phishing execution chain where Office applications spawn script interpreters or living-off-the-land binaries, consistent with localized spear-phishing tradecraft
status: experimental
author: Security Arsenal Threat Intelligence
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection_parent:
    ParentImage|endswith:
      - '\winword.exe'
      - '\excel.exe'
      - '\powerpnt.exe'
      - '\outlook.exe'
  selection_child:
    Image|endswith:
      - '\powershell.exe'
      - '\pwsh.exe'
      - '\wscript.exe'
      - '\cscript.exe'
      - '\mshta.exe'
      - '\rundll32.exe'
      - '\certutil.exe'
      - '\bitsadmin.exe'
  condition: selection_parent and selection_child
falsepositives:
  - Rare legitimate macro automation
level: high
tags:
  - attack.execution
  - attack.t1059
  - attack.t1204.002
  - attack.t1566.001
---
title: EMPERADOR Campaign — Pre-Encryption Staging — Shadow Copy Deletion and Mass Archive Creation
description: Detects Volume Shadow Copy tampering and bulk compression utilities commonly executed in the 48-72h staging window before ransomware detonation
status: experimental
author: Security Arsenal Threat Intelligence
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection_vss:
    Image|endswith:
      - '\vssadmin.exe'
      - '\wmic.exe'
      - '\bcdedit.exe'
    CommandLine|contains:
      - 'delete shadows'
      - 'shadowcopy delete'
      - 'recoveryenabled no'
      - 'bootstatuspolicy ignoreallfailures'
  selection_archive:
    Image|endswith:
      - '\7z.exe'
      - '\rar.exe'
      - '\winrar.exe'
    CommandLine|contains:
      - ' a '
      - '-p'
      - '-hp'
  condition: 1 of selection_*
falsepositives:
  - Backup administrators managing shadow copies
  - Legitimate archive creation by power users
level: critical
tags:
  - attack.impact
  - attack.t1490
  - attack.t1560.001

// EMPERADOR hunt — lateral movement + pre-ransomware staging (Microsoft Sentinel)
// Looks for PsExec-style service installs, WMI remote execution, and archive/staging
// tooling clustered on the same host within a 24h window.
let Lookback = 14d;
let SuspiciousServiceInstall =
    SecurityEvent
    | where TimeGenerated > ago(Lookback)
    | where EventID == 7045
    | where ServiceFileName has_any ("PSEXESVC", "\\ADMIN$", "\\IPC$")
       or ServiceName =~ "PSEXESVC"
    | project Host=Computer, TimeGenerated, ServiceName, ServiceFileName, Account;
let WMIRemoteExec =
    SecurityEvent
    | where TimeGenerated > ago(Lookback)
    | where EventID == 4688
    | where Process has_any ("wmic.exe", "wmiprvse.exe")
       and (CommandLine has_any ("/node:", "process call create") or ParentProcessName has "wmiprvse")
    | project Host=Computer, TimeGenerated, Process, CommandLine, Account;
let StagingTools =
    SecurityEvent
    | where TimeGenerated > ago(Lookback)
    | where EventID == 4688
    | where Process has_any ("7z.exe", "rar.exe", "winrar.exe", "rclone.exe", "megacmd.exe")
       or CommandLine has_any ("vssadmin delete shadows", "bcdedit", "wbadmin delete")
    | project Host=Computer, TimeGenerated, Process, CommandLine, Account;
let AllSignals = union SuspiciousServiceInstall, WMIRemoteExec, StagingTools;
AllSignals
| summarize SignalCount=count(),
            DistinctSignals=dcount(Process),
            FirstSeen=min(TimeGenerated),
            LastSeen=max(TimeGenerated),
            Commands=make_set(strcat(Process, " :: ", CommandLine), 10)
    by Host, Account
| where SignalCount >= 3
| sort by LastSeen desc;

<#
.SYNOPSIS
  Security Arsenal rapid-response script — EMPERADOR pre-ransomware staging check
.DESCRIPTION
  Run on file servers / hypervisor hosts / domain controllers to detect:
   1) Exposed RDP configuration
   2) Scheduled tasks created in the last 7 days (persistence)
   3) Volume Shadow Copy tampering
   4) Recently created local admin accounts
  Output is written to C:\IR\EmperadorCheck_<hostname>_<timestamp>.log
#>

$ErrorActionPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'
$outDir = 'C:\IR'
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $outDir -Force | Out-Null
$log = Join-Path $outDir ("EmperadorCheck_{0}_{1}.log" -f $env:COMPUTERNAME, (Get-Date -Format 'yyyyMMdd_HHmmss'))

function Write-Section($t) { "`n===== $t =====" | Tee-Object -FilePath $log -Append }

Write-Section "RDP EXPOSURE"
$rdp = Get-ItemProperty 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server' -Name fDenyTSConnections
"RDP Disabled flag (0 = ENABLED): $($rdp.fDenyTSConnections)" | Tee-Object $log -Append
Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 3389 -State Listen |
  Select-Object LocalAddress, LocalPort, OwningProcess | Tee-Object $log -Append

Write-Section "SCHEDULED TASKS CREATED IN LAST 7 DAYS"
Get-ScheduledTask | ForEach-Object {
    $info = $_ | Get-ScheduledTaskInfo
    [PSCustomObject]@{ TaskName=$_.TaskName; TaskPath=$_.TaskPath; LastRun=$info.LastRunTime }
} | Where-Object {
    try { (Get-Item "C:\Windows\System32\Tasks$($_.TaskPath)$($_.TaskName)").CreationTime -gt (Get-Date).AddDays(-7) } catch { $false }
} | Format-Table -AutoSize | Tee-Object $log -Append

Write-Section "VOLUME SHADOW COPIES"
$shadows = Get-CimInstance Win32_ShadowCopy
if (-not $shadows) { "WARNING: NO shadow copies present — possible anti-recovery tampering (T1490)" | Tee-Object $log -Append }
else { $shadows | Select-Object DeviceObject, InstallDate, VolumeName | Format-Table -AutoSize | Tee-Object $log -Append }

Write-Section "LOCAL ADMIN ACCOUNTS CREATED/MODIFIED IN LAST 7 DAYS"
Get-LocalGroupMember -Group 'Administrators' | ForEach-Object {
    try {
        $u = Get-LocalUser -Name ($_.Name -split '\\')[-1]
        [PSCustomObject]@{ Name=$u.Name; Enabled=$u.Enabled; PasswordLastSet=$u.PasswordLastSet; LastLogon=$u.LastLogon }
    } catch {}
} | Where-Object { $_.PasswordLastSet -gt (Get-Date).AddDays(-7) } | Format-Table -AutoSize | Tee-Object $log -Append

Write-Section "COMPLETE — review $log"

Incident Response Priorities

T-Minus Detection Checklist (Before Encryption Fires)

EMPERADOR's assessed 48–72 hour staging window offers the best interdiction opportunity. Hunt for:

1. Shadow copy deletion events (vssadmin, wmic shadowcopy delete, bcdedit changes) — the single highest-fidelity pre-detonation signal.
2. Bulk archive creation — 7z/rar with password flags against file shares, especially on servers hosting ERP, logistics, or production data.
3. New outbound transfer tools — rclone, MEGA clients, FTP sessions to unfamiliar hosts; exfil precedes encryption in double extortion.
4. Anomalous admin logons at off-hours — RDP (LogonType 10) from VPN pools or foreign geographies outside business patterns.
5. New services named PSEXESVC or randomized 8-character strings — classic lateral movement artifacts.
6. EDR/AV tampering — defender exclusions added, security services stopped, or agents uninstalled.

Critical Assets Historically Prioritized for Exfiltration

Based on the sectors in this campaign, expect targeting of:

• Transportation/logistics: shipment manifests, customer contracts, customs documentation, TMS databases.
• Manufacturing: CAD/design files, supplier pricing, ERP exports, OT-adjacent production schedules.
• Food production: quality/safety compliance records, buyer contracts, payroll.
• Universal: domain controller NTDS.dit, finance department shares, HR/payroll data (maximizes regulatory and reputational leverage).

Containment Actions — Ordered by Urgency

1. Isolate affected segments immediately — disable switch ports / apply host firewall blocks; do NOT power off systems (preserves memory artifacts).
2. Disable compromised and suspicious accounts — force enterprise-wide credential reset, prioritizing Domain Admins and VPN users; revoke active sessions and tokens.
3. Block exfiltration egress — emergency firewall rules denying outbound to non-business destinations; inspect for rclone/MEGA/cloud-storage traffic.
4. Preserve evidence — capture memory and triage images from patient-zero and staging hosts before remediation.
5. Verify backup integrity and isolation — confirm backups are offline/immutable and predates intrusion; test one restore before wiping anything.
6. Engage IR support and counsel — regulatory clocks (where applicable) and negotiation decisions require legal guidance early. Do not contact the threat actor without counsel involvement.

Hardening Recommendations

Immediate (24 Hours)

• Patch perimeter devices: Apply fixes for CVE-2026-50751 (Check Point — disable IKEv1 if unused), CVE-2026-20316 (Cisco FMC — rotate credentials), and CVE-2026-59310 (VMware vCenter — restrict management interface to jump hosts).
• Kill exposed RDP: Remove internet-facing RDP entirely; enforce VPN + MFA for all remote administration. Audit 3389 exposure via external scan today.
• Enforce phishing-resistant MFA on VPN, email, and remote access — TOTP at minimum, FIDO2 preferred.
• Block Office macros from the internet via Mark-of-the-Web Group Policy; deploy attack surface reduction rules blocking Office child processes.
• Deploy the Sigma rules above to your SIEM and alert at high severity on shadow-copy deletion.

Short-Term (2 Weeks)

• Segment the network: Isolate OT/production VLANs, file servers, and backup infrastructure from general user subnets; deny lateral SMB/RDP between workstation segments.
• Implement immutable, off-network backups (3-2-1-1-0) with tested restore procedures — assume the gang will attempt backup destruction.
• Deploy EDR with tamper protection across servers and workstations, and forward logs to a SIEM the ransomware cannot reach.
• Restrict lateral movement tooling: Block PsExec/WMI from non-admin workstations; use tiered administration with dedicated privileged access workstations.
• Egress filtering and DLP: Alert on bulk outbound transfers and unsanctioned cloud storage destinations — exfiltration is the extortion leverage; stopping it reduces payment pressure even if encryption occurs.
• Tabletop the EMPERADOR playbook with IT, legal, and executives using the containment sequence above.

Related Resources

Security Arsenal Incident Response Managed SOC & MDR Services AlertMonitor Threat Detection From The Dark Side Intel Hub