malware

Penquin S0587

Type: malware
Platform: Linux
Created: 11 March 2021
Last modified: 22 October 2025

Penquin is a remote access trojan (RAT) with multiple versions used by Turla to target Linux systems since at least 2014.[1][2]

TechniquesTop 25%

TacticsTop 11%

Threat groupunranked

CampaignsNone recorded

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

Penquin MITRE reference S0587

System Network Configuration Discovery T1016 ↗

Penquin can report the IP of the compromised host to attacker controlled infrastructure.3

Discovery25 detection rules

Indicator Removal from Tools T1027.005 ↗

Penquin can remove strings from binaries.4

Stealth6 detection rules

Encrypted/Encoded File T1027.013 ↗

Penquin has encrypted strings in the binary for obfuscation.5

Stealth1 detection rules

Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location T1036.005 ↗

Penquin has mimicked the Cron binary to hide itself on compromised systems.6

Stealth30 detection rules

Network Sniffing T1040 ↗

Penquin can sniff network traffic to look for packets matching specific conditions.7 8

Credential Access · Discovery12 detection rules

Exfiltration Over C2 Channel T1041 ↗

Penquin can execute the command code do_upload to send files to C2.9

Exfiltration16 detection rules

Standing S0587

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

Techniques18Top 25%

75th percentile · 75% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.

Tactics9Top 11%

89th percentile · 89% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many tactics spanned or fewer.

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 / technique14med29th pct

29th percentile · 71% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more detection rules per technique.

Tests / technique4.5med32nd pct

32nd percentile · 68% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more atomic tests per technique.

Data comps / technique5med54% 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 / technique2medTop 9%

91st percentile · 91% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many mitigations per technique or fewer.

5 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this malware’s 18 Enterprise techniques.

Range

Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.

Campaigns · 0Sigma rules (cumulative) · 244Splunk ESCU (cumulative) · 136

Standing S0587

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects the deletion of the "Zone.Identifier" ADS. (...)	Hunting	test	file_delete	windows	Sysmon	Stealth Indicator Removal File Deletion	-	low	frack113	2023-09-04	—	7eac0a16-5832-4e81-865f-0268a6d19e4b
	Detects the deletion of the "Zone.Identifier" ADS by an uncommon process. (...)	Generic	test	file_delete	windows	Sysmon	Stealth Indicator Removal File Deletion	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-09-04	2025-07-04	3109530e-ab47-4cc6-a953-cac5ebcc93ae
	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
Splunk	The following analytic detects the execution of tools commonly exploited by cybercriminals, such as those used for unauthorized access, network scanning, privilege escalation, password dumping or data exfiltration. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike · Cisco NVM · Cisco	Reconnaissance Active Scanning Stealth Masquerading Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location Credential Access OS Credential Dumping	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Splunk, sventec, Github Community	2021-07-12	2026-09-22	a51bfe1a-94f0-48cc-b4e4-16a110145893	-
	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 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
	Identifies when a Azure Kubernetes CronJob runs in Azure Cloud. (...)	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	Azure Activity Logs · Azure	Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Cron	-	medium	Austin Songer @austinsonger	2021-11-22	2022-12-18	1c71e254-6655-42c1-b2d6-5e4718d7fc0a
	Detects backup catalog deletions	Generic	test	-	windows	WinEventLog Application	Stealth Indicator Removal File Deletion	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tom U. @c_APT_ure (collection)	2017-05-12	2022-12-25	9703792d-fd9a-456d-a672-ff92efe4806a
	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 the usage of the unsafe bpftrace option	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter Unix Shell	-	medium	Andreas Hunkeler (@Karneades)	2022-02-11	—	f8341cb2-ee25-43fa-a975-d8a5a9714b39
	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
	Detects chmod targeting files in sensitive directory paths on Linux systems. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Defense Impairment File and Directory Permissions Modification Linux and Mac Permissions	-	medium	Christopher Peacock @SecurePeacock, SCYTHE @scythe_io	2022-06-03	2026-03-18	6419afd1-3742-47a5-a7e6-b50386cd15f8
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 execution of packet capture commands on Cisco ASA devices via CLI or ASDM. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Credential Access, Collection Adversary-in-the-Middle Credential Access, Discovery Network Sniffing	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-11-21	2026-05-13	7e9c3f8a-4b2d-4c5e-9a1f-6d8e5b3c2a9f
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
	See what files are being deleted from flash file systems	Generic	test	authentication	-	Cisco AAA · Cisco	Impact Disk Wipe Disk Content Wipe Disk Structure Wipe Stealth Indicator Removal File Deletion	-	medium	Austin Clark	2019-08-12	2023-01-04	71d65515-c436-43c0-841b-236b1f32c21e	-
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 creation of a cron job within the Cisco Isovalent environment. (...)	Anomaly	stable	process_creation	-	Cisco	Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Cron Container Orchestration Job	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Splunk	2026-01-05	2026-05-13	94531a31-a041-4777-909f-cd92ed3b71ad
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 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 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	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 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 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 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
	Show when a monitor or a span/rspan is setup or modified	Generic	test	authentication	-	Cisco AAA · Cisco	Credential Access, Discovery Network Sniffing	-	medium	Austin Clark	2019-08-11	2023-01-04	b9e1f193-d236-4451-aaae-2f3d2102120d	-
Splunk	This analytic detects changes to SNMP community strings on Cisco devices, which could indicate an attacker establishing persistence or attempting to extract credentials. (...)	Anomaly	stable	configuration_change	-	Cisco IOS · Cisco	Defense Impairment Disable or Modify Tools Credential Access, Discovery Network Sniffing Credential Access Unsecured Credentials	CVE-2018-0171	medium	Bhavin Patel, Michael Haag, Splunk	2025-08-21	2026-05-13	b0ce5521-2533-4f24-b8d5-c2ff977aae08
	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	-
Splunk	The following analytic detects the execution of `cipher.exe` with the `/w` flag to clear unallocated sectors on a disk. (...)	Generic	stable	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security · CrowdStrike	Stealth Indicator Removal File Deletion	-	medium	Teoderick Contreras, Splunk	2021-06-10	2026-05-13	cd80a6ac-c9d9-11eb-8839-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