malware

DDKONG S0255

Type: malware
Created: 17 October 2018
Last modified: 4 September 2024

DDKONG is a malware sample that was part of a campaign by Rancor. DDKONG was first seen used in February 2017. [1]

TechniquesBottom 17%

TacticsBottom 21%

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

DDKONG MITRE reference S0255

File and Directory Discovery T1083 ↗

DDKONG lists files on the victim’s machine.2

Discovery29 detection rules

Ingress Tool Transfer T1105 ↗

DDKONG downloads and uploads files on the victim’s machine.3

Command and Control131 detection rules

Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information T1140 ↗

DDKONG decodes an embedded configuration using XOR.4

Stealth20 detection rules

Rundll32 T1218.011 ↗

DDKONG uses Rundll32 to ensure only a single instance of itself is running at once.5

Stealth60 detection rules

Standing S0255

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

Techniques4Bottom 17%

17th percentile · 83% 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 / technique44.5medTop 11%

89th percentile · 89% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.

Tests / technique13.5medTop 3%

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

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 / technique0.5medBottom 23%

23rd percentile · 77% 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 4 Enterprise techniques.

Range

Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.

Campaigns · 0Sigma rules (cumulative) · 173Splunk ESCU (cumulative) · 67

Standing S0255

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 indicators of APT 29 (Cozy Bear) phishing-campaign as reported by mandiant	Emerging	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), @41thexplorer	2018-11-20	2023-03-08	7453575c-a747-40b9-839b-125a0aae324b
	Detects indicators of APT 29 (Cozy Bear) phishing-campaign as reported by mandiant	Emerging	stable	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	critical	@41thexplorer	2018-11-20	2023-02-20	3a3f81ca-652c-482b-adeb-b1c804727f74
	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 automated lateral movement by Turla group	Unsupported	unsupported	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Discovery File and Directory Discovery Discovery Network Share Discovery Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares	-	medium	Markus Neis	2017-11-07	2023-02-24	75925535-ca97-4e0a-a850-00b5c00779dc
	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 attackers using tooling with bad opsec defaults. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	high	Oleg Kolesnikov @securonix invrep_de, oscd.community, Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Christian Burkard (Nextron Systems)	2020-10-23	2024-08-15	a7c3d773-caef-227e-a7e7-c2f13c622329
	Detects usage of the "FromBase64String" function in the commandline which is used to decode a base64 (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Stealth Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information Stealth Obfuscated Files or Information	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2020-01-29	2023-01-26	e32d4572-9826-4738-b651-95fa63747e8a
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 usage of "getcap" binary. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Discovery File and Directory Discovery	-	low	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-12-28	2026-01-24	d8d97d51-122d-4cdd-9e2f-01b4b4933530
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of CertUtil.exe with the 'decode' argument, which may indicate an attempt to decode a previously encoded file, potentially containing malicious payloads. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Stealth Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information	-	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2021-03-25	2026-10-02	bfe94226-8c10-11eb-a4b3-acde48001122
	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	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	-
	Rundll32 can be use by Cobalt Strike with StartW function to load DLLs from the command line.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	high	Wojciech Lesicki	2021-06-01	2022-09-16	ae9c6a7c-9521-42a6-915e-5aaa8689d529
	Detects launch of executable by calling the LaunchApplication function from pcwutl.dll library.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	medium	Julia Fomina, oscd.community	2020-10-05	2023-02-09	9386d78a-7207-4048-9c9f-a93a7c2d1c05
	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
	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 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
	Detect the usage of "DirLister.exe" a utility for quickly listing folder or drive contents. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Discovery File and Directory Discovery	-	low	frack113	2022-08-20	2023-02-04	b4dc61f5-6cce-468e-a608-b48b469feaa2
	Detects calls of DLLs exports by ordinal numbers via rundll32.dll.	Hunting	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-10-22	2024-07-16	e79a9e79-eb72-4e78-a628-0e7e8f59e89c
	Detects when a user enables DNS-over-HTTPS. (...)	Generic	test	registry_set	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information Persistence, Defense Impairment Modify Registry	-	medium	Austin Songer	2021-07-22	2023-08-17	04b45a8a-d11d-49e4-9acc-4a1b524407a5
	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 a specific export function name used by one of EquationGroup tools	Emerging	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-03-04	2023-03-09	d465d1d8-27a2-4cca-9621-a800f37cf72e
	Detects Golden Chickens deployment method as used by Evilnum and described in ESET July 2020 report	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth System Binary Proxy Execution Rundll32	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2020-07-10	2023-03-09	8acf3cfa-1e8c-4099-83de-a0c4038e18f0
	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 usage of system utilities such as "find", "tree", "findmnt", etc, to discover files, directories and network shares.	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Discovery File and Directory Discovery	-	informational	Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community, CheraghiMilad	2020-10-19	2024-12-01	d3feb4ee-ff1d-4d3d-bd10-5b28a238cc72
	Detects usage of system utilities to discover files and directories	Generic	test	process_creation	macos	-	Discovery File and Directory Discovery	-	informational	Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community	2020-10-19	2022-11-25	089dbdf6-b960-4bcc-90e3-ffc3480c20f6
	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

Title

Description