DarkHydrus is a threat group that has targeted government agencies and educational institutions in the Middle East since at least 2016. The group heavily leverages open-source tools and custom payloads for carrying out attacks. [1][2]
7
TechniquesBottom 24%
5
Tactics26th pct
3
Tools & malware47th pct
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
DarkHydrus used an open-source tool, Phishery, to inject malicious remote template URLs into Microsoft Word documents and then sent them to victims to enable Forced Authentication.8
DarkHydrus has sent spearphishing emails with password-protected RAR archives containing malicious Excel Web Query files (.iqy). The group has also sent spearphishing emails that contained malicious Microsoft Office documents that use the “attachedTemplate” technique to load a template from a remote server.101112
Initial Access56 detection rules
Standing G0079
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.
Reach
Techniques7Bottom 24%
24th percentile · 76% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics526th pct
26th percentile · 74% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more tactics spanned.
Tools & malware347th pct
47th percentile · 53% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more tools and malware.
Campaigns089% tie · 4 values
89% of the population shares a single value across only 4 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique15med43rd pct
43rd percentile · 57% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique3med
DarkHydrus detections G0079
447 distinct rules cover the 7 techniques recorded for this group. 314 Sigma · 133 Splunk.
7 covered by at least one rule447 distinct rules in total
Showing 1-50 of 400+ rules
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MITRE ATT&CK
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Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe
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.
The following analytic detects the creation of a batch file (.bat) within the Windows system directory tree, specifically in the System32 or SysWOW64 folders. (...)
The following analytic detects potential reverse shell activity by identifying connections involving ports commonly associated with remote access tools, shell listeners, or tunneling utilities. (...)
The following analytic detects the use of the Certify tool via an in-memory PowerShell function to enumerate Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) environments. (...)
This rule detects execution of a PowerShell code through the sqlps.exe utility, which is included in the standard set of utilities supplied with the MSSQL Server. (...)
Detects DNS-based Kerberos coercion attacks where adversaries inject marshaled credential structures into DNS records to spoof SPNs and redirect authentication such as in CVE-2025-33073. (...)
The following analytic detects email attachments with an unusually high number of spaces in their file names, which is a common tactic used by attackers to obfuscate file extensions. (...)
The following analytic detects the usage of specific Exchange PowerShell modules, such as New-MailboxExportRequest, New-ManagementRoleAssignment, New-MailboxSearch, and Get-Recipient. (...)