malware

RemoteCMD S0166

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 16 January 2018
Last modified: 20 January 2026

RemoteCMD is a custom tool used by APT3 to execute commands on a remote system similar to SysInternal's PSEXEC functionality. [1]

TechniquesBottom 12%

Tactics32nd pct

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

RemoteCMD MITRE reference S0166

Scheduled Task T1053.005 ↗

RemoteCMD can execute commands remotely by creating a new schedule task on the remote system2

Execution · Persistence · Privilege Escalation79 detection rules

Ingress Tool Transfer T1105 ↗

RemoteCMD copies a file over to the remote system before execution.3

Command and Control131 detection rules

Service Execution T1569.002 ↗

RemoteCMD can execute commands remotely by creating a new service on the remote system.4

Execution55 detection rules

Standing S0166

Reach is how much of ATT&CK this malware 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 825 ATT&CK software entries 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

Techniques3Bottom 12%

12th percentile · 88% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.

Tactics432nd pct

32nd percentile · 68% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more tactics spanned.

Threat group161% tie · 22 values

61% of the population shares a single value across only 22 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.

Campaigns085% tie · 8 values

85% of the population shares a single value across only 8 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.

Coverage

Rules / technique79medTop 1%

99th percentile · 99% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.

Tests / technique14medTop 2%

98th percentile · 98% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many atomic tests per technique or fewer.

Data comps / technique5med54% tie · 11 values

54% of the population shares a single value across only 11 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.

Mitigations / technique3medTop 3%

97th percentile · 97% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many mitigations per technique or fewer.

5 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this malware’s 3 Enterprise techniques.

Range

Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.

Campaigns · 0Sigma rules (cumulative) · 185Splunk ESCU (cumulative) · 79

Standing S0166

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects DNS queries made by "AppInstaller.EXE". (...)	Generic	test	dns	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	frack113	2021-11-24	2023-11-09	7cff77e1-9663-46a3-8260-17f2e1aa9d0a
	Detects execution of GfxDownloadWrapper.exe with a URL as an argument to download file.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Victor Sergeev, oscd.community	2020-10-09	2023-10-18	eee00933-a761-4cd0-be70-c42fe91731e7
	Detects file creation events linked to the Axios NPM supply chain compromise. (...)	Emerging	experimental	file_event	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Initial Access Supply Chain Compromise Compromise Software Supply Chain	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	b7cb840c-11f6-47f7-b3ef-5524739c9077
	Detects file creation events linked to the Axios NPM supply chain compromise on macOS devices. (...)	Emerging	experimental	file_event	macos	-	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Initial Access Supply Chain Compromise Compromise Software Supply Chain	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	2db0458c-05c9-4069-a26f-77becd9c8c13
	Detects the Linux-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency by Axios NPM package, including payload download via curl and detached execution using nohup and python3. (...)	Emerging	experimental	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Unix Shell Python Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Initial Access Supply Chain Compromise Compromise Software Supply Chain	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	0a23a62d-c5b3-468b-a072-25064a9a8c87
	Detects the macOS-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency in Axios NPM Package, including AppleScript execution via osascript, payload download, permission modification, execution, and cleanup.	Emerging	experimental	process_creation	macos	-	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter AppleScript Unix Shell Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Initial Access Supply Chain Compromise Compromise Software Supply Chain	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	a09ee860-31b3-4586-8a68-0ebd74ce0e5f
	Detects the specific Windows execution chain and process tree associated with the Axios NPM supply chain compromise. (...)	Emerging	experimental	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell Visual Basic Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Initial Access Supply Chain Compromise Compromise Software Supply Chain	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	f6c27ecc-d890-4452-80e6-2e274a10e097
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of `bitsadmin.exe` with the `transfer` parameter to download a remote object. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Execution, Persistence, Stealth BITS Jobs Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Michael Haag, Sittikorn S	2021-03-30	2026-10-02	80630ff4-8e4c-11eb-aab5-acde48001122
	Detects execution of Chromium based browser in headless mode	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth Hide Artifacts Hidden Window Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	low	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-09-12	—	ef9dcfed-690c-4c5d-a9d1-482cd422225c
	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	The following analytic detects the execution of curl commands with insecure flags within the Cisco Isovalent environment. (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	-	Cisco	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Splunk	2026-01-05	2026-10-02	c16c4899-d3f7-461b-92c2-cc0ef5758855
Splunk	This analytic identifies the use of Chromium-based browsers (like Microsoft Edge) running in headless mode with the `--dump-dom` argument. (...)	Generic	stable	network_connection	-	Cisco NVM · Cisco	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-07-01	2026-09-22	cd0e816f-f67d-4dbe-a153-480b546e867e
Splunk	This analytic detects unexpected outbound network connections initiated by known webserver processes such as `httpd.exe`, `nginx.exe`, or `tomcat.exe` to common file sharing or public content hosting services like GitHub, Discord CDN, Transfer.sh, or Pastebin. (...)	Generic	stable	network_connection	-	Cisco NVM · Cisco	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-07-01	2026-09-22	1984f997-3b49-4d4b-a7e9-dc5dbf88370e
Splunk	The following analytic detects potential reverse shell activity by identifying connections involving ports commonly associated with remote access tools, shell listeners, or tunneling utilities. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Command and Control Non-Standard Port Privilege Escalation, Stealth Process Injection Command and Control Remote Access Tools Lateral Movement Remote Services	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-03	2026-05-13	d85c05c8-42c0-4e4a-87e7-4e1bb3e844e3
Splunk	The following analytic detects outbound connections to commonly abused file sharing and pastebin-style hosting domains. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Exfiltration to Cloud Storage Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Resource Development Obtain Capabilities Tool Command and Control Proxy External Proxy	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-03	2026-05-13	f7e5e792-d907-46c1-a58e-4ff974dc462a
Splunk	The following analytic detects file transfers flagged as malware that occurred over non-standard ports (other than 80 and 443). (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Command and Control Non-Standard Port	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-09	2026-09-22	f26445a8-a6a2-4855-bec0-0c39e52e5b8f
Splunk	The following analytic detects connections with a high Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) threat confidence score, indicating potentially malicious behavior within encrypted traffic. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Command and Control Encrypted Channel Asymmetric Cryptography Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-03	2026-05-13	8c15183e-2e70-4db4-86c3-88f8d9129b66
Splunk	The following analytic detects file downloads that were classified as malware by Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Execution Exploitation for Client Execution Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-09	2026-09-22	3cc93f52-5aa6-4b7f-83b9-3430b1436813
Splunk	The following analytic detects repeated malware file downloads initiated by the same internal host (src) within a short time window. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Stealth Obfuscated Files or Information	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-09	2026-09-22	aeff2bb5-3483-48d4-9be8-c8976194be1e
Splunk	This analytic identifies Snort intrusion signatures that have been triggered by ten or more distinct internal IP addresses within a one-hour window. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Stealth Obfuscated Files or Information	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-16	2026-05-13	a4c76d0a-56b6-44be-814b-939746c4d406
Splunk	The following analytic detects outbound connections initiated by command-line tools such as curl or wget. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Cron	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-03	2026-05-13	173a1cb9-1814-4128-a9dc-f29dade89957
	Various protocols maybe used to put data on the device for exfil or infil	Generic	test	authentication	-	Cisco AAA · Cisco	Collection Archive Collected Data Archive via Utility Collection Data Staged Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	low	Austin Clark	2019-08-12	2023-01-04	5e51acb2-bcbe-435b-99c6-0e3cd5e2aa59	-
	Detects known malicious service installs that appear in cases in which a Cobalt Strike beacon elevat (...)	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Windows Service Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares Execution System Services Service Execution	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Wojciech Lesicki	2021-05-26	2022-11-27	d7a95147-145f-4678-b85d-d1ff4a3bb3f6
	Detects known malicious service installs that appear in cases in which a Cobalt Strike beacon elevat (...)	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog System	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Windows Service Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares Execution System Services Service Execution	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Wojciech Lesicki	2021-05-26	2022-11-27	5a105d34-05fc-401e-8553-272b45c1522d
	Detects a suspicious command line execution that includes an URL and AppData string in the command l (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Jonhnathan Ribeiro, oscd.community	2019-01-16	2021-11-27	1ac8666b-046f-4201-8aba-1951aaec03a3
	Detects the installation of a service named "javamtsup" on the system. (...)	Emerging	test	service	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Windows Service Execution System Services Service Execution	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community (update)	2017-03-27	2022-10-09	cb062102-587e-4414-8efa-dbe3c7bf19c6
	Detects well-known credential dumping tools execution via service execution events	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog Security	Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory Security Account Manager LSA Secrets Cached Domain Credentials Execution System Services Service Execution	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Teymur Kheirkhabarov, Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community	2017-03-05	2022-11-29	f0d1feba-4344-4ca9-8121-a6c97bd6df52
	Detects well-known credential dumping tools execution via service execution events	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog System	Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory Security Account Manager LSA Secrets Cached Domain Credentials Execution System Services Service Execution	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Teymur Kheirkhabarov, Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community	2017-03-05	2022-11-29	4976aa50-8f41-45c6-8b15-ab3fc10e79ed
	Detects default CSExec service filename which indicates CSExec service installation and execution	Generic	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Execution System Services Service Execution	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-08-04	—	f0e2b768-5220-47dd-b891-d57b96fc0ec1
	Detects CSExec service installation and execution events	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog System	Execution System Services Service Execution	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-08-07	—	a27e5fa9-c35e-4e3d-b7e0-1ce2af66ad12
	Adversaries can use curl to download payloads remotely and execute them. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution	-	high	Sreeman, Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2020-01-13	2024-03-05	21dd6d38-2b18-4453-9404-a0fe4a0cc288
Splunk	The following analytic detects the execution of the curl utility where the command line includes percent-encoded characters and explicit file output options (such as -o or --output). (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	windows · linux	CrowdStrike · Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Stealth Obfuscated Files or Information	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2026-03-03	2026-05-13	9a8d5516-4c5e-11ef-9d42-acde48001122
	Detects a curl process start on linux, which indicates a file download from a remote location or a s (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	low	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-09-15	—	ea34fb97-e2c4-4afb-810f-785e4459b194
	Detects a curl process start on Windows, which could indicates a file download from a remote locatio (...)	Hunting	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	low	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-07-05	2023-02-21	bbeaed61-1990-4773-bf57-b81dbad7db2d
	Detects the usage of curl.exe, KeyScramblerLogon, or other non-standard/suspicious processes used to create Autoit3.exe. (...)	Emerging	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Micah Babinski	2023-10-15	—	1a433e1d-03d2-47a6-8063-ece992cf4e73
	Detects the deactivation and disabling of the Scheduled defragmentation task as seen by Slingshot AP (...)	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Scheduled Task	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Bartlomiej Czyz (@bczyz1)	2019-03-04	2022-10-09	958d81aa-8566-4cea-a565-59ccd4df27b0
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of Certify or Certipy tools to enumerate Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) environments. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer Credential Access Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates	-	medium	Steven Dick	2023-07-28	2026-05-13	e6d2dc61-a8b9-4b03-906c-da0ca75d71b8
	Detects registry event related to the creation of a scheduled task used by Diamond Sleet APT during (...)	Emerging	test	scheduled_job	windows	WinEventLog Security	Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Scheduled Task	CVE-2023-42793	critical	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-10-24	—	3b8e5084-4de9-449a-a40d-0e11014f2e2d
	Identifies clients that may be performing DNS lookups associated with common currency mining pools.	Generic	test	-	-	DNS · Zeek	Impact Resource Hijacking Execution System Services Service Execution	-	low	Saw Winn Naung, Azure-Sentinel, @neu5ron	2021-08-19	2022-07-07	bf74135c-18e8-4a72-a926-0e4f47888c19
	Detects exploitation of DNS RCE bug reported in CVE-2020-1350 by the detection of suspicious sub pro (...)	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application Execution System Services Service Execution	CVE-2020-1350	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2020-07-15	2022-07-12	b5281f31-f9cc-4d0d-95d0-45b91c45b487
	Detects the use of wget to download content to a suspicious directory	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Joseliyo Sanchez, @Joseliyo_Jstnk	2023-06-02	—	cf610c15-ed71-46e1-bdf8-2bd1a99de6c4
Splunk	The following analytic detects suspicious file downloads by the Telegram application on a Windows system. (...)	Generic	stable	create_stream_hash	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Teoderick Contreras, Splunk	2021-05-07	2026-05-13	58194e28-ae5e-11eb-8912-acde48001122
	Detects download of certain file types from hosts with dynamic DNS names (selected list)	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Dynamic Resolution Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2017-11-08	2023-05-18	195c1119-ef07-4909-bb12-e66f5e07bf3c
Splunk	The following analytic detects excessive usage of the `sc.exe` service utility on a host machine. (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon	Execution System Services Service Execution	-	medium	Teoderick Contreras, Splunk	2021-06-24	2026-05-13	cb6b339e-d4c6-11eb-a026-acde48001122
	Detects executable access via webdav6. (...)	Generic	test	-	-	HTTP · Zeek	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	SOC Prime, Adam Swan	2020-05-01	2021-11-27	aac2fd97-bcba-491b-ad66-a6edf89c71bf
	Detects execution of the IEExec utility to download and execute files	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-05-16	2023-11-09	9801abb8-e297-4dbf-9fbd-57dde0e830ad
	Detects execution of a browser process with a URL argument pointing to a file with a potentially interesting extension. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-01-11	2025-10-27	94771a71-ba41-4b6e-a757-b531372eaab6
	Detects when a user downloads a file from an IP based URL using CertOC.exe	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-10-18	—	b86f6dea-0b2f-41f5-bdcc-a057bd19cd6a
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of download or file reading utilities from Windows, Linux or MacOS to download or read the contents of a file from a remote or local source and pipe it directly to a shell for execution. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows · linux	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	CVE-2021-44228	medium	Michael Haag, Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, DipsyTipsy	2025-10-24	2026-09-01	26f86252-1549-45e1-a212-eb26840e86bc
	Detects execution of the Notepad++ updater (gup) from a process other than Notepad++ to download files.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Ingress Tool Transfer	-	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-10	2023-03-02	44143844-0631-49ab-97a0-96387d6b2d7c

Title

Description