group

Stealth Falcon G0038

Created: 31 May 2017
Last modified: 31 July 2026
Alias: Stealth Falcon

Stealth Falcon is a threat group that has conducted targeted spyware attacks against Emirati journalists, activists, and dissidents since at least 2012. Circumstantial evidence suggests there could be a link between this group and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government, but that has not been confirmed. [1]

Techniques48th pct

Tactics48th pct

Tools & malwareNone recorded

CampaignsNone recorded

Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.

Standing G0038

Reach is how much of ATT&CK this group touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 176 ATT&CK groups only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects potential DLL sideloading of DLLs that are known to be abused from suspicious locations	Generic	test	image_load	windows	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter	-	high	X__Junior (Nextron Systems)	2023-07-11	—	799a5f48-0ac1-4e0f-9152-71d137d48c2a
	Detects file access requests to browser credential stores by uncommon processes. (...)	Hunting	test	file_event	windows	WinEventLog Security	Credential Access Credentials from Password Stores Credentials from Web Browsers	-	low	Daniel Koifman (@Koifsec), Nasreddine Bencherchali	2024-10-21	—	4b60e527-ec73-4b47-8cb3-f02ad927ca65
	Adversaries may acquire credentials from web browsers by reading files specific to the target browser. (...)	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Credential Access Credentials from Password Stores Credentials from Web Browsers	-	medium	frack113	2022-01-30	—	fc028194-969d-4122-8abe-0470d5b8f12f
	Detects file access requests to the Windows Credential History File by an uncommon application. (...)	Generic	test	file_access	windows	-	Credential Access Credentials from Password Stores Windows Credential Manager	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-10-17	2024-07-29	7a2a22ea-a203-4cd3-9abf-20eb1c5c6cd2
	Detects file access requests to the the Windows Data Protection API Master keys by an uncommon application. (...)	Generic	test	file_access	windows	-	Credential Access Credentials from Password Stores Windows Credential Manager	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-10-17	2026-07-28	46612ae6-86be-4802-bc07-39b59feb1309
	Detects usage of winget to add a new insecure (http) download source. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter	-	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-04-17	—	81a0ecb5-0a41-4ba1-b2ba-c944eb92bfa2
	Detects usage of winget to add new additional download sources	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-04-17	—	05ebafc8-7aa2-4bcd-a269-2aec93f9e842
	Detects usage of winget to add new potentially suspicious download sources	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-04-17	2023-12-04	c15a46a0-07d4-4c87-b4b6-89207835a83b
	Detects suspicious local connections via a named pipe to the AD FS configuration database (Windows Internal Database). (...)	Generic	test	pipe_created	windows	Sysmon	Collection Data from Local System	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g	2021-10-08	2023-11-30	1ea13e8c-03ea-409b-877d-ce5c3d2c1cb3
	Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe	Generic	test	ps_module	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g	2019-08-11	2025-10-17	64e8e417-c19a-475a-8d19-98ea705394cc
	Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe	Generic	test	pipe_created	windows	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g, Tim Shelton	2019-09-12	2025-10-07	58cb02d5-78ce-4692-b3e1-dce850aae41a
	Detects the removal or uninstallation of an application via "Wmic.EXE".	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	medium	frack113	2022-01-28	2024-07-02	b53317a0-8acf-4fd1-8de8-a5401e776b96
	Detects an attempt to terminate a process via "wmic" with the "call terminate" flag. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-09-11	—	49d9671b-0a0a-4c09-8280-d215bfd30662
	Detects when AppLocker "Audit only" enforcement mode reports that an Application, DLL, Script, MSI, or Packaged-App would have been blocked if AppLocker "Enforce rules" enforcement mode was enabled.	Generic	experimental	-	windows	AppLocker	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Visual Basic Python Execution User Execution Malicious File	-	medium	heyyanu	2026-03-26	—	557e3bd3-7f21-495d-8d50-7c8bdfb8041c
	Detects when AppLocker prevents the execution of an Application, DLL, Script, MSI, or Packaged-App from running.	Generic	test	-	windows	AppLocker	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Visual Basic Python Execution User Execution Malicious File	-	medium	Pushkarev Dmitry	2020-06-28	2025-12-03	401e5d00-b944-11ea-8f9a-00163ecd60ae
	Detects suspicious user agent strings used in APT malware in proxy logs	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Markus Neis	2019-11-12	2024-02-15	6ec820f2-e963-4801-9127-d8b2dce4d31b
	Detects suspicious user agent string of APT40 Dropbox tool	Emerging	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Exfiltration to Cloud Storage	-	high	Thomas Patzke	2019-11-12	2023-05-18	5ba715b6-71b7-44fd-8245-f66893e81b3d
	Detects spawning of suspicious child processes by Atlassian Confluence server which may indicate suc (...)	Emerging	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2022-26134	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-03	—	7fb14105-530e-4e2e-8cfb-99f7d8700b66
	Detects automated lateral movement by Turla group	Unsupported	unsupported	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Discovery File and Directory Discovery Discovery Network Share Discovery Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares	-	medium	Markus Neis	2017-11-07	2023-02-24	75925535-ca97-4e0a-a850-00b5c00779dc
	Detects changes to the EC2 instance startup script. (...)	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Unix Shell	-	high	faloker	2020-02-12	2022-06-07	1ab3c5ed-5baf-417b-bb6b-78ca33f6c3df
	An attempt to export an AWS EC2 instance has been detected. (...)	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Collection Data from Local System Exfiltration Transfer Data to Cloud Account	-	low	Diogo Braz	2020-04-16	2022-10-05	54b9a76a-3c71-4673-b4b3-2edb4566ea7b
	Detects DNS queries for the malicious C2 domain associated with the plain-crypto-js/Axios npm package supply chain compromise. (...)	Emerging	experimental	dns	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Command and Control Dynamic Resolution	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	73e5d24f-493f-4092-bd2f-c72cabda40ee
	This detection uses Windows security events to detect suspicious access attempts to the registry key of Azure AD Health monitoring agent. (...)	Generic	test	-	windows	WinEventLog Security	Discovery Query Registry	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez (Cyb3rWard0g), OTR (Open Threat Research), MSTIC	2021-08-26	2022-10-09	ff151c33-45fa-475d-af4f-c2f93571f4fe
	This detection uses Windows security events to detect suspicious access attempts to the registry key values and sub-keys of Azure AD Health service agents (e.g AD FS). (...)	Generic	test	-	windows	WinEventLog Security	Discovery Query Registry	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez (Cyb3rWard0g), OTR (Open Threat Research), MSTIC	2021-08-26	2022-10-09	1d2ab8ac-1a01-423b-9c39-001510eae8e8
	Identifies when a new cloudshell is created inside of Azure portal.	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	Azure Activity Logs · Azure	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter	-	medium	Austin Songer	2021-09-21	2022-08-23	72af37e2-ec32-47dc-992b-bc288a2708cb
	focuses on trivial artifacts observed in variants of prevalent offensive ps1 payloads, including Cob (...)	Generic	test	ps_module	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	critical	ok @securonix invrep_de, oscd.community	2020-10-09	2022-12-25	8d31a8ce-46b5-4dd6-bdc3-680931f1db86
	Detects usage of the "FromBase64String" function in the commandline which is used to decode a base64 (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Stealth Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information Stealth Obfuscated Files or Information	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2020-01-29	2023-01-26	e32d4572-9826-4738-b651-95fa63747e8a
	Detects user data export activity.	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	Bitbucket Audit · Bitbucket	Collection Data from Information Repositories Reconnaissance Gather Victim Org Information Identify Roles Discovery System Information Discovery	-	medium	Muhammad Faisal (@faisalusuf)	2024-02-25	—	5259cbf2-0a75-48bf-b57a-c54d6fabaef3
	Detects user permission data export attempt.	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	Bitbucket Audit · Bitbucket	Collection Data from Information Repositories Reconnaissance Gather Victim Org Information Identify Roles Discovery System Information Discovery	-	medium	Muhammad Faisal (@faisalusuf)	2024-02-25	—	87cc6698-3e07-4ba2-9b43-a85a73e151e2
	Detects Bitsadmin connections to IP addresses instead of FQDN names	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution, Persistence, Stealth BITS Jobs	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-10	2022-08-24	8ccd35a2-1c7c-468b-b568-ac6cdf80eec3
	Detects Bitsadmin connections to domains with uncommon TLDs	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution, Persistence, Stealth BITS Jobs	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tim Shelton	2019-03-07	2026-09-30	9eb68894-7476-4cd6-8752-23b51f5883a7
	Detects default file names outputted by the BloodHound collection tool SharpHound	Generic	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Discovery Account Discovery Local Account Domain Account Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Discovery Domain Trust Discovery Discovery Permission Groups Discovery Local Groups Domain Groups	-	high	C.J. May	2022-08-09	2026-02-19	02773bed-83bf-469f-b7ff-e676e7d78bab
	Attempts to detect system changes made by Blue Mockingbird	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	high	Trent Liffick (@tliffick)	2020-05-14	2022-10-09	c3198a27-23a0-4c2c-af19-e5328d49680e
	Attempts to detect system changes made by Blue Mockingbird	Emerging	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	high	Trent Liffick (@tliffick)	2020-05-14	2023-08-17	92b0b372-a939-44ed-a11b-5136cf680e27
	detects BPFDoor .lock and .pid files access in temporary file storage facility	Generic	test	file_event	linux	Linux Auditd	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Execution Native API	-	high	Rafal Piasecki	2022-08-10	2026-03-30	808146b2-9332-4d78-9416-d7e47012d83d
	Detects powershell execution with that make use of to the bxor (Bitwise XOR). (...)	Hunting	test	ps_classic_start	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	low	Teymur Kheirkhabarov, Harish Segar	2020-06-29	2024-12-11	812837bb-b17f-45e9-8bd0-0ec35d2e3bd6
	Detects the use of the "capsh" utility to invoke a shell.	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter	-	high	Li Ling, Andy Parkidomo, Robert Rakowski, Blake Hartstein (Bloomberg L.P.)	2024-09-02	—	db1ac3be-f606-4e3a-89e0-9607cbe6b98a
	Detects calls to cmdlets that are used to export certificates from the local certificate store. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Credential Access Unsecured Credentials Private Keys	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-05-18	—	9e716b33-63b2-46da-86a4-bd3c3b9b5dfb
	Detects HTTP request used by Chafer malware to receive data from its C2.	Emerging	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-01-31	2024-02-15	fb502828-2db0-438e-93e6-801c7548686d
	Detects changing the PowerShell script execution policy to a potentially insecure level using the "-ExecutionPolicy" flag.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	frack113	2021-11-01	2025-10-07	87e3c4e8-a6a8-4ad9-bb4f-46e7ff99a180
	Detects changing the PowerShell script execution policy to a potentially insecure level using the "Set-ExecutionPolicy" cmdlet.	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	frack113	2021-10-20	2023-12-14	61d0475c-173f-4844-86f7-f3eebae1c66b
	Adversaries may communicate using application layer protocols associated with web traffic to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. (...)	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	medium	frack113	2022-01-23	2025-07-18	d4488827-73af-4f8d-9244-7b7662ef046e
Splunk	The following analytic identifies the execution of the "whoami" command with the "/group" flag, where the results are passed to the "find" command in order to look for a the string "12288". (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Discovery System Owner/User Discovery	-	medium	Teoderick Contreras, Splunk	2021-09-14	2026-05-13	a9079b18-1633-11ec-859c-acde48001122	-
	Detects patterns found in process executions cause by China Chopper like tiny (ASPX) webshells	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Discovery Account Discovery Discovery Remote System Discovery Persistence Server Software Component Web Shell Discovery System Owner/User Discovery	CVE-2022-41040 CVE-2022-41082	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), MSTI (query)	2022-10-01	—	fa3c117a-bc0d-416e-a31b-0c0e80653efb
	Detects execution of ChromeLoader malware via a registered scheduled task	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Scheduled Task Persistence Software Extensions	-	high	@kostastsale	2022-01-10	—	0a74c5a9-1b71-4475-9af2-7829d320d5c2
Splunk	This analytic detects file copy activity on Cisco ASA devices via CLI or ASDM. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Collection Data from Cloud Storage Collection Data from Local System	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-11-21	2026-05-13	4d7e8f3a-9c2b-4e6f-8a1d-5b9c7e2f4a8c
Splunk	This analytic detects file copy operations to remote locations on Cisco ASA devices via CLI or ASDM. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Collection Data from Local System Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-11-21	2026-05-13	8a9e5f2b-6d4c-4e7f-9b3a-1c8d7f5e2a9b
Splunk	This analytic detects potential reconnaissance activities on Cisco ASA devices by identifying execution of multiple information-gathering "show" commands within a short timeframe. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Reconnaissance Gather Victim Network Information Domain Properties IP Addresses Discovery System Information Discovery	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-11-21	2026-05-13	6e9d4f7a-3c8b-4a9e-8d2f-7b5c9e1a6f3d
	Collect pertinent data from the configuration files	Generic	test	authentication	-	Cisco AAA · Cisco	Discovery Account Discovery Local Account Collection Data from Local System Credential Access Unsecured Credentials Credentials In Files	-	low	Austin Clark	2019-08-11	2023-01-04	cd072b25-a418-4f98-8ebc-5093fb38fe1a
	Find information about network devices that is not stored in config files	Generic	test	authentication	-	Cisco AAA · Cisco	Discovery File and Directory Discovery Discovery Password Policy Discovery Discovery Process Discovery Discovery Remote System Discovery Discovery System Information Discovery Discovery System Network Configuration Discovery Discovery System Network Connections Discovery Discovery System Owner/User Discovery Discovery System Time Discovery	-	low	Austin Clark	2019-08-12	2023-01-04	9705a6a1-6db6-4a16-a987-15b7151e299b

Title

Description

Stealth Falcon G0038

Stealth Falcon G0038

Stealth Falcon MITRE reference G0038

Standing G0038

Reach

Coverage

Stealth Falcon detections G0038