malware

PLAINTEE S0254

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 17 October 2018
Last modified: 25 April 2025

PLAINTEE is a malware sample that has been used by Rancor in targeted attacks in Singapore and Cambodia. [1]

Techniques44th pct

Tactics53rd pct

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

Standing S0254

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.

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects file access requests to files ending with either the ".hive"/".reg" extension, usually associated with Windows Registry backups.	Hunting	test	file_access	windows	-	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	low	frack113	2023-09-15	2024-07-29	337a31c6-46c4-46be-886a-260d7aa78cac
	Detect set Notification_Suppress to 1 to disable the Windows security center notification	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	medium	frack113	2022-08-19	2023-08-17	0c93308a-3f1b-40a9-b649-57ea1a1c1d63
	Detect set DisallowRun to 1 to prevent user running specific computer program	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	medium	frack113	2022-08-19	2023-08-17	275641a5-a492-45e2-a817-7c81e9d9d3e9
	Detect enable rdp feature to allow specific user to rdp connect on the targeted machine	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	medium	frack113	2022-08-19	2023-08-17	37b437cf-3fc5-4c8e-9c94-1d7c9aff842b
	Detects Windows Installer service (msiexec.exe) spawning "cmd" or "powershell"	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	medium	Teymur Kheirkhabarov (idea), Mangatas Tondang (rule), oscd.community	2020-10-13	2022-10-20	1e53dd56-8d83-4eb4-a43e-b790a05510aa
	This rule will looks any process with low privilege launching Windows Installer service (msiexec.exe (...)	Unsupported	unsupported	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	high	Teymur Kheirkhabarov (idea), Mangatas Tondang (rule), oscd.community	2020-10-13	—	078235c5-6ec5-48e7-94b2-f8b5474379ea
	Detects Windows Installer service (msiexec.exe) trying to install MSI packages with SYSTEM privilege	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	medium	Teymur Kheirkhabarov (idea), Mangatas Tondang (rule), oscd.community	2020-10-13	2024-12-01	cd951fdc-4b2f-47f5-ba99-a33bf61e3770
	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 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 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 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 specific windows registry modifications made by BlackByte ransomware variants. (...)	Emerging	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	high	frack113	2022-01-24	2025-10-21	83314318-052a-4c90-a1ad-660ece38d276
	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 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
	Bypasses User Account Control using a fileless method	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	high	frack113	2022-01-05	2023-08-17	46dd5308-4572-4d12-aa43-8938f0184d4f
	Detects the setting of the environement variable "windir" to a non default value. (...)	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	high	frack113, Nextron Systems	2022-01-06	2024-01-30	724ea201-6514-4f38-9739-e5973c34f49a
	Detect commandline usage of Microsoft Connection Manager Profile Installer (cmstp.exe) to install sp (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution CMSTP	-	high	E.M. Anhaus (originally from Atomic Blue Detections, Endgame), oscd.community	2019-10-24	2022-08-30	e66779cc-383e-4224-a3a4-267eeb585c40
	Identifies use of Fodhelper.exe to bypass User Account Control. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	high	E.M. Anhaus (originally from Atomic Blue Detections, Tony Lambert), oscd.community	2019-10-24	2021-11-27	7f741dcf-fc22-4759-87b4-9ae8376676a2
	Detects use of WSReset.exe to bypass User Account Control (UAC). (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Privilege Escalation Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Bypass User Account Control	-	high	E.M. Anhaus (originally from Atomic Blue Detections, Tony Lambert), oscd.community, Florian Roth	2019-10-24	2022-05-13	d797268e-28a9-49a7-b9a8-2f5039011c5c
	Detect possible persistence using Fax DLL load when service restart	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	high	frack113	2022-07-17	2022-12-30	9e3357ba-09d4-4fbd-a7c5-ad6386314513
	Detect change of the user account associated with the FAX service to avoid the escalation problem.	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	high	frack113	2022-07-17	2022-12-30	e3fdf743-f05b-4051-990a-b66919be1743
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 identifies non-browser processes reaching out to public IP lookup or geolocation servi (...)	Anomaly	stable	network_connection	-	Cisco NVM · Cisco	Reconnaissance Gather Victim Network Information IP Addresses Discovery System Network Configuration Discovery	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, Janantha Marasinghe	2025-07-01	2026-09-22	568cb83e-d79e-4a23-85ec-6e1f6c30cb2f
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 modification of Windows Registry Classes keys used for persistence. (...)	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Boot or Logon Autostart Execution Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder	-	medium	Victor Sergeev, Daniil Yugoslavskiy, Gleb Sukhodolskiy, Timur Zinniatullin, oscd.community, Tim Shelton, frack113 (split)	2019-10-25	2025-10-22	9df5f547-c86a-433e-b533-f2794357e242
	Detects changes to the ClickOnce trust prompt registry key in order to enable an installation from different locations such as the Internet.	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	medium	@SerkinValery, Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-06-12	2023-08-17	ac9159cc-c364-4304-8f0a-d63fc1a0aabb
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

Title

Description

PLAINTEE S0254

PLAINTEE MITRE reference S0254

Standing S0254

Reach

Coverage

PLAINTEE detections S0254