malware

Spark S0543

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 15 December 2020
Last modified: 25 April 2025

Spark is a Windows backdoor and has been in use since as early as 2017.[1]

Techniques47th pct

Tactics41st pct

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

Spark MITRE reference S0543

Software Packing T1027.002 ↗

Spark has been packed with Enigma Protector to obfuscate its contents.2

Stealth1 detection rules

System Owner/User Discovery T1033 ↗

Spark has run the whoami command and has a built-in command to identify the user logged in.3

Discovery47 detection rules

Exfiltration Over C2 Channel T1041 ↗

Spark has exfiltrated data over the C2 channel.4

Exfiltration16 detection rules

Windows Command Shell T1059.003 ↗

Spark can use cmd.exe to run commands.5

Execution63 detection rules

Web Protocols T1071.001 ↗

Spark has used HTTP POST requests to communicate with its C2 server to receive commands.6

Command and Control60 detection rules

System Information Discovery T1082 ↗

Spark can collect the hostname, keyboard layout, and language from the system.7

Discovery54 detection rules

Standing S0543

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

Techniques1047th pct

47th percentile · 53% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.

Tactics541st pct

41st percentile · 59% 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 / technique18med41st pct

41st percentile · 59% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more detection rules per technique.

Tests / technique5med42nd pct

42nd percentile · 58% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more atomic tests per technique.

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 10 Enterprise techniques.

Range

Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.

Campaigns · 0Sigma rules (cumulative) · 183Splunk ESCU (cumulative) · 79

Standing S0543

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	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 suspicious user agent strings used in APT malware in proxy logs	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Markus Neis	2019-11-12	2024-02-15	6ec820f2-e963-4801-9127-d8b2dce4d31b
	Detects suspicious user agent string of APT40 Dropbox tool	Emerging	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Exfiltration to Cloud Storage	-	high	Thomas Patzke	2019-11-12	2023-05-18	5ba715b6-71b7-44fd-8245-f66893e81b3d
	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
	Detects DNS queries for the malicious C2 domain associated with the plain-crypto-js/Axios npm package supply chain compromise. (...)	Emerging	experimental	dns	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Command and Control Dynamic Resolution	-	high	Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)	2026-04-01	—	73e5d24f-493f-4092-bd2f-c72cabda40ee
	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
	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
	Detects Bitsadmin connections to IP addresses instead of FQDN names	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution, Persistence, Stealth BITS Jobs	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-06-10	2022-08-24	8ccd35a2-1c7c-468b-b568-ac6cdf80eec3
	Detects Bitsadmin connections to domains with uncommon TLDs	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution, Persistence, Stealth BITS Jobs	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tim Shelton	2019-03-07	2026-09-30	9eb68894-7476-4cd6-8752-23b51f5883a7
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
	Detects HTTP request used by Chafer malware to receive data from its C2.	Emerging	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-01-31	2024-02-15	fb502828-2db0-438e-93e6-801c7548686d
	Adversaries may communicate using application layer protocols associated with web traffic to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. (...)	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	medium	frack113	2022-01-23	2025-07-18	d4488827-73af-4f8d-9244-7b7662ef046e
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 file copy operations to remote locations on Cisco ASA devices via CLI or ASDM. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Collection Data from Local System Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-11-21	2026-05-13	8a9e5f2b-6d4c-4e7f-9b3a-1c8d7f5e2a9b
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	This analytic detects the usage of the Utility osascript on a macOS device initiated a network connection lasting longer than 10 minutes (600 seconds). (...)	Anomaly	stable	network_connection	-	Cisco NVM · Cisco	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter AppleScript	-	medium	Radka Viskova, Splunk	2026-09-18	2026-09-22	6bc88a9d-f7de-4257-b526-acf15bc5a517
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of known suspicious SSL certificates in any observed event where the SSL_CertFingerprint field is present. (...)	Generic	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Resource Development Develop Capabilities Code Signing Certificates Command and Control Encrypted Channel Asymmetric Cryptography Resource Development Obtain Capabilities Digital Certificates	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-03	2026-09-22	c43f7b49-2dab-4e76-892e-7f971c2f20f1
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 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	This analytic detects intrusion events from known threat activity using Cisco Secure Firewall Intrusion Events. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Encrypted Channel Asymmetric Cryptography Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-05-12	2026-09-22	b71e57e8-c571-4ff1-ae13-bc4384a9e891
Splunk	This analytic detects Lumma Stealer download attempts using Cisco Secure Firewall Intrusion Events. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Encrypted Channel Asymmetric Cryptography Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, Talos NTDR	2025-04-16	2026-05-13	66f22f52-fbae-4be7-a263-561dacb63613
Splunk	This analytic detects Lumma Stealer outbound connection attempts using Cisco Secure Firewall Intrusion Events. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Command and Control Encrypted Channel Asymmetric Cryptography Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, Talos NTDR	2025-04-16	2026-05-13	66f22f52-fbae-4be7-a263-561dacb63612
Splunk	The following analytic detects potentially suspicious large volumes of data sent by the connection initiator on flows from internal to external networks. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service Exfiltration to Cloud Storage	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-04-03	2026-05-13	3d8536b6-52b4-4c3e-b695-3f2e90bb22be
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
	Detects DNS requests to Cloudflared tunnels domains. (...)	Generic	test	dns	windows	Sysmon	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols Command and Control Protocol Tunneling	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-12-20	—	a1d9eec5-33b2-4177-8d24-27fe754d0812
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 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 Turla ComRAT network communication.	Emerging	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2020-05-26	2024-02-26	7857f021-007f-4928-8b2c-7aedbe64bb82
	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 use of chcp to look up the system locale value as part of host discovery	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Discovery System Location Discovery System Language Discovery	-	medium	_pete_0, TheDFIRReport	2022-02-21	2024-03-05	7090adee-82e2-4269-bd59-80691e7c6338
	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
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
	Detects suspicious user agent strings used by crypto miners in proxy logs	Generic	test	proxy	-	-	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2019-10-21	2021-11-27	fa935401-513b-467b-81f4-f9e77aa0dd78
	Detects execution of curl.exe with custom useragent options	Hunting	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol Web Protocols	-	medium	frack113	2022-01-23	2023-02-21	3286d37a-00fd-41c2-a624-a672dcd34e60
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 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 analytic identifies the use of SNICat tool commands within the TLS SNI field, indicating potential data exfiltration attempts. (...)	Generic	experimental	network_connection	-	Zeek	Exfiltration Exfiltration Over C2 Channel	-	medium	Shannon Davis, Splunk	2020-11-05	2026-05-13	82d06410-134c-11eb-adc1-0242ac120002
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
	Well-known DNS Exfiltration tools execution	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Command and Control Application Layer Protocol DNS Command and Control Data Encoding Standard Encoding Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol Exfiltration Over Symmetric Encrypted Non-C2 Protocol	-	high	Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community	2019-10-24	2021-11-27	98a96a5a-64a0-4c42-92c5-489da3866cb0
	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