malware

HAPPYWORK S0214

Type: malware
Created: 18 April 2018
Last modified: 17 November 2024

HAPPYWORK is a downloader used by APT37 to target South Korean government and financial victims in November 2016. [1]

TechniquesBottom 12%

TacticsBottom 12%

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

HAPPYWORK MITRE reference S0214

System Owner/User Discovery T1033 ↗

can collect the victim user name.2

Discovery47 detection rules

System Information Discovery T1082 ↗

can collect system information, including computer name, system manufacturer, IsDebuggerPresent state, and execution path.3

Discovery54 detection rules

Ingress Tool Transfer T1105 ↗

can download and execute a second-stage payload.4

Command and Control131 detection rules

Standing S0214

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.

Tactics2Bottom 12%

12th percentile · 88% 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 / technique54medTop 6%

94th percentile · 94% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.

Tests / technique39medTop 1%

100th percentile · None of the 825 ATT&CK software entries has more atomic tests per technique — the highest in the population.

Data comps / technique4med54% 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 / technique0medBottom 17%

17th percentile · 83% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more mitigations per technique.

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) · 152Splunk ESCU (cumulative) · 77

Standing S0214

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
	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
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
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
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
	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
Splunk	This analytic detects bursts of Cisco IOS or NX-OS discovery commands associated with Salt Typhoon tradecraft. (...)	Anomaly	stable	network_device	-	Cisco IOS · Cisco	Reconnaissance Gather Victim Network Information Discovery System Information Discovery Discovery System Network Configuration Discovery	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali	2026-05-19	2026-05-20	71ac5328-2364-40cf-8381-92b8dc531399
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 the use of the redirection character ">" to redirect information on the command line. (...)	Hunting	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Discovery System Information Discovery	-	low	frack113	2022-01-22	2024-03-19	4f4eaa9f-5ad4-410c-a4be-bc6132b0175a
	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 usage of the Get-ADComputer cmdlet to collect computer information and output it to a file	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Discovery System Owner/User Discovery	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-11-10	2022-11-17	435e10e4-992a-4281-96f3-38b11106adde
	Detects usage of the Get-ADComputer cmdlet to collect computer information and output it to a file	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Discovery System Owner/User Discovery	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-11-17	—	db885529-903f-4c5d-9864-28fe199e6370
	Detects potential container discovery via listing of certain kernel features in the "/proc" virtual (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Discovery System Information Discovery	-	low	Seth Hanford	2023-08-23	—	746c86fb-ccda-4816-8997-01386263acc4
	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
Splunk	The following analytic identifies specific GET or HEAD requests to web servers that indicate reconnaissance attempts to find vulnerable JBoss servers. (...)	Generic	experimental	webserver	-	-	Initial Access, Persistence External Remote Services Discovery System Information Discovery	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Splunk	2020-04-29	2026-05-13	104658f4-afdc-499e-9719-17243f982681	-
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 listing or file reading of ".dockerenv" which can be a sing of potential container discovery	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Discovery System Information Discovery	-	low	Seth Hanford	2023-08-23	—	11701de9-d5a5-44aa-8238-84252f131895
	Domain user and group enumeration via network reconnaissance. (...)	Unsupported	unsupported	-	-	DCE/RPC · Zeek	Discovery Account Discovery Domain Account Discovery System Information Discovery	-	medium	Nate Guagenti (@neu5ron), Open Threat Research (OTR)	2020-05-03	2023-03-24	66a0bdc6-ee04-441a-9125-99d2eb547942
	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
	Detects the execution of "whoami.exe" with the "/all" flag	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Discovery System Owner/User Discovery	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-12-04	2024-03-05	c248c896-e412-4279-8c15-1c558067b6fa
	Detects execution of the "esxcli" command with the "network" flag in order to retrieve information about the network configuration.	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Hypervisor CLI Discovery System Owner/User Discovery Discovery System Service Discovery	-	medium	Cedric Maurugeon	2023-09-04	—	33e814e0-1f00-4e43-9c34-31fb7ae2b174
	Detects execution of the "esxcli" command with the "storage" flag in order to retrieve information about the storage status and other related information. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Hypervisor CLI Discovery System Owner/User Discovery Discovery System Service Discovery	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), Cedric Maurugeon	2023-09-04	—	f41dada5-3f56-4232-8503-3fb7f9cf2d60
Splunk	This detection identifies the use of ESXCLI system-level commands that retrieve configuration details. (...)	Generic	stable	-	esxi	VMware ESXi · VMware	Discovery System Information Discovery	-	medium	Raven Tait, Splunk	2025-07-11	2026-05-13	b4d4217a-6673-4fb6-837d-07a522bdf9f7	-
	Detects execution of the "esxcli" command with the "system" flag in order to retrieve information about the different component of the system. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Hypervisor CLI Discovery System Owner/User Discovery Discovery System Service Discovery	-	medium	Cedric Maurugeon	2023-09-04	—	e80273e1-9faf-40bc-bd85-dbaff104c4e9