Medical technology company Stryker was hit by a cyberattack that caused a global outage across its systems early Wednesday, with staff and contractors reporting that the logo of the Iran-linked hacking group Handala appeared on login pages, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The hacktivist group claimed responsibility for the attack in a lengthy post to Telegram stating that Stryker’s offices in 79 countries had been forced to shut down and that it had erased data from 200,000 systems, servers, and mobile devices, according to KrebsOnSecurity. A source who spoke with KrebsOnSecurity said that the perpetrators of the attack appeared to have exploited a Microsoft service called “Microsoft Intune” to remotely wipe all connected devices. 

Handala said the cyberattack was in response to the February 28 missile strike that hit an Iranian school, killing at least 175 people, most of them children, KrebsOnSecurity said.

Stryker confirmed it was dealing with a cyberattack and said the incident disrupted its Microsoft environment, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Employees were instructed not to turn on company-issued devices and to disconnect from all networks immediately. An internal notice viewed by the newspaper said the disruption was severe and global across Stryker’s Windows environment, affecting both client devices and servers and significantly limiting users’ ability to access systems and services. 

Staff also found that some remote Windows devices had been wiped, according to the report.

Handala, a pro-Palestinian hacking group that emerged around 2022, has been linked to Iran by several threat-intelligence companies and has recently claimed attacks on Israeli companies and businesses in Gulf states, according to the Journal. 

Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Stryker reported $25.12 billion in 2025 revenue and employs about 56,000 people globally, according to the Journal. The company makes hospital and surgical equipment including orthopedic and neurosurgery devices, joint implants, surgical instruments, hospital beds and robotic-assisted surgery systems, the report said.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Read more at KrebsOnSecurity