PAYLOAD extortion group abuses domain-root GPO to disrupt a Middle East manufacturer without deploying a Windows encryptor
In April 2026, Kaspersky GERT responded to an incident at a Middle East manufacturing organization where the actor gained domain admin-equivalent control of Active Directory. The actor created and linked a malicious GPO named PAYLOAD at the domain root. It pushed ransom notes, a wallpaper and lock screen, a logon banner and a local admini…