HARDRAIN S0246

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 17 October 2018
Last modified: 12 May 2026

HARDRAIN is a Trojan malware variant reportedly used by the North Korean government. [1]

TechniquesBottom 23%

TacticsBottom 21%

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

HARDRAIN MITRE reference S0246

Protocol or Service Impersonation T1001.003 ↗

HARDRAIN uses FakeTLS to communicate with its C2 server.2

Command and Control3 detection rules

Windows Command Shell T1059.003 ↗

HARDRAIN uses cmd.exe to execute netshcommands.3

Execution63 detection rules

Proxy T1090 ↗

HARDRAIN uses the command cmd.exe /c netsh firewall add portopening TCP 443 "adp" and makes the victim machine function as a proxy server.4

Command and Control30 detection rules

Non-Standard Port T1571 ↗

HARDRAIN binds and listens on port 443 with a FakeTLS method.5

Command and Control9 detection rules

Windows Host Firewall T1686.003 ↗

HARDRAIN opens the Windows Firewall to modify incoming connections.6

Defense Impairment22 detection rules

Standing S0246

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

Techniques5Bottom 23%

23rd percentile · 77% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.

Tactics3Bottom 21%

21st percentile · 79% 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 / technique22med53rd pct

53rd percentile · 53% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.

Tests / technique2med

HARDRAIN detections S0246

127 distinct rules cover the 5 techniques recorded for this malware. 99 Sigma · 28 Splunk.

5 covered by at least one rule127 distinct rules in total

Showing 1-50 of 100+ rules

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Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects when a single rules or all of the rules have been deleted from the Windows Defender Firewall	Generic	test	-	windows	Windows Firewall	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	frack113	2022-02-19	2024-08-29	c187c075-bb3e-4c62-b4fa-beae0ffc211f
	Detects the degradation of the system firewall security by the creation or re-enabling of per-applic (...)	Generic	experimental	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	frack113	2026-10-13	—	6648f900-4a7d-47e3-bad6-952b313a1c0e
	Detects the creation of an "Active Directory Schema Cache File" (.sch) file by an uncommon tool.	Generic	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Data Obfuscation Protocol or Service Impersonation	-	medium	xknow @xknow_infosec, Tim Shelton	2019-03-24	2023-10-18	75bf09fa-1dd7-4d18-9af9-dd9e492562eb
	Detects when a all the rules have been deleted from the Windows Defender Firewall configuration	Generic	test	-	windows	Windows Firewall	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	high	frack113, Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-01-17	2024-01-22	79609c82-a488-426e-abcf-9f341a39365d
	Detects the degradation of the system firewall security by the DoNotAllowExceptions policy value bei (...)	Generic	experimental	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	frack113	2026-10-13	—	c69fc6a2-607d-4530-b7d1-75823af1bde4
	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 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
	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	This analytic detects creation of a Cisco IOS-XE tunnel interface with tunnel source, tunnel destination, and an IP address in the 10.10.12.0 network. (...)	Anomaly	stable	network_device	-	Cisco IOS · Cisco	Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali	2026-05-19	2026-05-20	8654314d-8e4d-4971-9f35-b9d477bf668e
Splunk	The following analytic detects any outbound network connection from an endpoint process to a known suspicious or non-standard port. (...)	Anomaly	stable	network_connection	-	Cisco NVM · Cisco	Command and Control Non-Standard Port	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-07-01	2026-09-22	fc32a8d5-bc79-4437-b48f-4646ab7bed9d
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 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
	Detects execution of the "cloudflared" tool with the tunnel "cleanup" flag in order to cleanup tunnel connections.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-05-17	2023-12-21	7050bba1-1aed-454e-8f73-3f46f09ce56a
	Detects execution of the "cloudflared" tool to connect back to a tunnel. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	medium	Janantha Marasinghe, Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-05-17	2023-12-20	9a019ffc-3580-4c9d-8d87-079f7e8d3fd4
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of `cmd.exe /c` to execute commands, a technique often employed by adversaries and malware to run batch commands or invoke other shells like PowerShell. (...)	Hunting	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	CVE-2021-44228	medium	Teoderick Contreras, Bhavin Patel, Splunk	2021-10-21	2026-05-13	54a6ed00-3256-11ec-b031-acde48001122
Splunk	The following analytic identifies the use of named-pipe impersonation for privilege escalation, commonly associated with Cobalt Strike and similar frameworks. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Windows Service	-	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2021-05-27	2026-05-13	eb277ba0-b96b-11eb-b00e-acde48001122
	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 an executable initiating a network connection to "LocaltoNet" tunneling sub-domains. (...)	Generic	test	network_connection	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	high	Andreas Braathen (mnemonic.io)	2024-06-17	—	3ab65069-d82a-4d44-a759-466661a082d1
	Detects an executable initiating a network connection to "LocaltoNet" tunneling sub-domains. (...)	Generic	test	network_connection	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	high	Andreas Braathen (mnemonic.io)	2024-06-17	—	c4568f5d-131f-4e78-83d4-45b2da0ec4f1
	Detects an executable accessing an ngrok tunneling endpoint, which could be a sign of forbidden exfi (...)	Generic	test	network_connection	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Dynamic Resolution Domain Generation Algorithms Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-11-03	—	19bf6fdb-7721-4f3d-867f-53467f6a5db6
	Detects an executable initiating a network connection to "ngrok" tunneling domains. (...)	Generic	test	network_connection	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Dynamic Resolution Domain Generation Algorithms Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-11-03	2024-02-02	1d08ac94-400d-4469-a82f-daee9a908849
	Detects programs that connect to uncommon destination ports	Generic	test	network_connection	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Non-Standard Port	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2017-03-19	2024-03-12	6d8c3d20-a5e1-494f-8412-4571d716cf5c
	detects the usage of path traversal in conhost.exe indicating possible command/argument confusion/hi (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	-	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-14	—	ee5e119b-1f75-4b34-add8-3be976961e39
	Detects setting proxy configuration	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Proxy	-	low	Ömer Günal	2020-06-17	2022-10-05	72f4ab3f-787d-495d-a55d-68c2ff46cf4c	-
Splunk	The following analytic detects potential exploitation of the CrushFTP authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2025-31161). (...)	Generic	stable	file_event	-	CrushFTP	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2025-31161	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2025-04-14	2026-09-08	82eb7f64-d219-4e21-acfe-956de84c1a35
Splunk	The following analytic detects executions of cmd.exe spawned by processes that are commonly abused by attackers and do not typically launch cmd.exe. (...)	Hunting	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Splunk	2020-04-29	2026-05-13	dcfd6b40-42f9-469d-a433-2e53f7486664	-
Splunk	The following detects the execution of cscript.exe or wscript.exe processes spawned by cmd.exe, leveraging Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) telemetry mapped to the Endpoint data model, with additional contextual filtering to improve fidelity and reduce false positives. (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Mauricio Velazco, Splunk	2020-04-29	2026-05-13	b89919ed-fe5f-492c-b139-95dbb162039e
	Adversaries may disable or modify system firewalls in order to bypass controls limiting network usag (...)	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	frack113	2022-01-09	2024-03-25	974515da-6cc5-4c95-ae65-f97f9150ec7f
	Detect set EnableFirewall to 0 to disable the Windows firewall	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	frack113	2022-08-19	2023-08-17	e78c408a-e2ea-43cd-b5ea-51975cf358c0
	Detects DNS queries made by the finger utility, which can be abused by threat actors to retrieve remote commands for execution on Windows devices. (...)	Generic	experimental	dns	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol DNS Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2025-11-19	—	c082c2b0-525b-4dbc-9a26-a57dc4692074
	The PowerShell implementation of DNSCat2 calls nslookup to craft queries. (...)	Unsupported	unsupported	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol DNS Command and Control Data Obfuscation Protocol or Service Impersonation Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	high	Cian Heasley	2020-08-08	2023-02-24	b11d75d6-d7c1-11ea-87d0-0242ac130003
	Detects Elise backdoor activity used by APT32	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2018-01-31	2023-03-09	e507feb7-5f73-4ef6-a970-91bb6f6d744f
	Detects the exploitation of Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central Java Deserialization vulnerability rep (...)	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application	CVE-2020-10189	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2020-03-25	2023-01-21	846b866e-2a57-46ee-8e16-85fa92759be7
	Detects exploitation attempt of privilege escalation vulnerability via SetupComplete.cmd and Partner (...)	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Execution, Stealth Hijack Execution Flow	CVE-2019-1378	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), oscd.community, Jonhnathan Ribeiro	2019-11-15	2021-11-27	1c373b6d-76ce-4553-997d-8c1da9a6b5f5
	Detects netsh commands that turns off the Windows firewall	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	Fatih Sirin	2019-11-01	2023-02-13	57c4bf16-227f-4394-8ec7-1b745ee061c3
	Detects the removal of a port or application rule in the Windows Firewall configuration using netsh	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	medium	frack113	2022-08-14	2025-10-07	1a5fefe6-734f-452e-a07d-fc1c35bce4b2
	Detects when a rule has been modified in the Windows firewall exception list	Hunting	test	-	windows	Windows Firewall	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify System Firewall Windows Host Firewall	-	low	frack113	2022-02-19	2024-01-22	5570c4d9-8fdd-4622-965b-403a5a101aa0
	This rule detect common flag combinations used by CrackMapExec in order to detect its use even if the binary has been replaced.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Credential Access Brute Force Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Discovery Password Policy Discovery Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-02-25	2023-03-08	42a993dd-bb3e-48c8-b372-4d6684c4106c
	Detects various execution patterns of the CrackMapExec pentesting framework	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	high	Thomas Patzke	2020-05-22	2023-11-06	058f4380-962d-40a5-afce-50207d36d7e2
	Detects executable names or flags used by Htran or Htran-like tools (e.g. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Proxy	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-12-27	2023-02-04	f5e3b62f-e577-4e59-931e-0a15b2b94e1e
	Detects the use of Jlaive to execute assemblies in a copied PowerShell	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell	-	medium	Jose Luis Sanchez Martinez (@Joseliyo_Jstnk)	2022-05-24	2023-02-22	0a99eb3e-1617-41bd-b095-13dc767f3def
	Detects command line parameters used by Koadic hack tool	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell Visual Basic JavaScript	-	high	wagga, Jonhnathan Ribeiro, oscd.community	2020-01-12	2023-02-11	5cddf373-ef00-4112-ad72-960ac29bac34
	Detects actions caused by the RedMimicry Winnti playbook a automated breach emulations utility	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Windows Command Shell Execution Native API Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	high	Alexander Rausch	2020-06-24	2023-03-01	95022b85-ff2a-49fa-939a-d7b8f56eeb9b
	Detects the launch of a child process via "conhost.exe" with the "--headless" flag. (...)	Hunting	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2024-07-23	—	00ca75ab-d5ce-43be-b86c-55ff39c6abfc
	Detects a suspicious child process of a Microsoft HTML Help (HH.exe)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Windows Command Shell Visual Basic JavaScript Initial Access Phishing Spearphishing Attachment Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Compiled HTML File Regsvr32 Rundll32 Execution Windows Management Instrumentation	-	high	Maxim Pavlunin, Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2020-04-01	2023-04-12	52cad028-0ff0-4854-8f67-d25dfcbc78b4
	Detects the execution of the "curl.exe" command, referencing "SOCKS" and ".onion" domains, which could be indicative of Kalambur backdoor activity.	Emerging	experimental	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Command and Control Encrypted Channel Command and Control Proxy	-	high	Arda Buyukkaya (EclecticIQ)	2025-02-11	—	e99375eb-3ee0-407a-9f90-79569cc6a01c
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of Ngrok on a Linux operating system. (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Protocol Tunneling Command and Control Proxy Command and Control Web Service	-	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2023-01-12	2026-05-13	bc84d574-708c-467d-b78a-4c1e20171f97
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of the `curl` command with proxy-related arguments such as `-x`, `socks`, `--preproxy`, and `--proxy`. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Command and Control Non-Application Layer Protocol Command and Control Proxy	-	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk, 0xC0FFEEEE, Github Community	2022-07-29	2026-06-04	bd596c22-ad1e-44fc-b242-817253ce8b08
	Indicates sign-in from a malicious IP address based on high failure rates.	Generic	test	-	-	Azure Risk Detection · Azure	Command and Control Proxy	-	high	Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Gloria Lee, '@gleeiamglo'	2023-09-07	—	a3f55ebd-0c01-4ed6-adc0-8fb76d8cd3cd