Zox S0672

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 9 January 2022
Last modified: 10 April 2024

Zox is a remote access tool that has been used by Axiom since at least 2008.[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.

Zox MITRE reference S0672

Steganography T1001.002 ↗

Zox has used the .PNG file format for C2 communications.2

Command and Controlno detection rules

Data from Local System T1005 ↗

Zox has the ability to upload files from a targeted system.3

Collection22 detection rules

SMB/Windows Admin Shares T1021.002 ↗

Zox has the ability to use SMB for communication.4

Lateral Movement54 detection rules

Encrypted/Encoded File T1027.013 ↗

Zox has been encoded with Base64.5

Stealth1 detection rules

Process Discovery T1057 ↗

Zox has the ability to list processes.6

Discovery10 detection rules

Exploitation for Privilege Escalation T1068 ↗

Zox has the ability to leverage local and remote exploits to escalate privileges.7

Privilege Escalation88 detection rules

Standing S0672

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

Techniques944th pct

44th percentile · 56% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.

Tactics653rd pct

53rd percentile · 53% 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 / technique22med53rd pct

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

Tests / technique4med

Zox detections S0672

330 distinct rules cover the 9 techniques recorded for this malware. 209 Sigma · 121 Splunk.

7 covered by at least one rule2 with no coverage330 distinct rules in total

Showing 1-50 of 300+ rules

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Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects access to ADMIN$ network share	Generic	test	network_connection	windows	WinEventLog Security	Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares	-	low	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2017-03-04	2024-01-16	098d7118-55bc-4912-a836-dc6483a8d150
	Detects suspicious local connections via a named pipe to the AD FS configuration database (Windows Internal Database). (...)	Generic	test	pipe_created	windows	Sysmon	Collection Data from Local System	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g	2021-10-08	2023-11-30	1ea13e8c-03ea-409b-877d-ce5c3d2c1cb3
	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 events generated by user-mode applications when they call the CveEventWrite API when a known vulnerability is trying to be exploited. (...)	Generic	test	-	windows	WinEventLog Application	Impact Endpoint Denial of Service Application or System Exploitation Execution Exploitation for Client Execution Credential Access Exploitation for Credential Access Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Stealth Exploitation for Stealth Lateral Movement Exploitation of Remote Services	CVE-2020-0601	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Zach Mathis	2020-01-15	2022-10-22	48d91a3a-2363-43ba-a456-ca71ac3da5c2
	Detects kernel auto-loading of the authencesn crypto module via modprobe This occurs when user-space (...)	Emerging	experimental	process_creation	linux	Sysmon	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Boot or Logon Autostart Execution Kernel Modules and Extensions Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	CVE-2026-31431	high	Gene Kazimiarovich	2026-05-09	—	474b415a-d917-4f3b-8c62-9e1a0d5f7b48
	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
	An attempt to export an AWS EC2 instance has been detected. (...)	Generic	test	cloud_audit	-	AWS CloudTrail · AWS	Collection Data from Local System Exfiltration Transfer Data to Cloud Account	-	low	Diogo Braz	2020-04-16	2022-10-05	54b9a76a-3c71-4673-b4b3-2edb4566ea7b
	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
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 buffer overflow attempts in Unix system log files	Generic	test	-	linux	-	Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2017-03-01	2025-03-17	18b042f0-2ecd-4b6e-9f8d-aa7a7e7de781
	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	This analytic detects file copy activity on Cisco ASA devices via CLI or ASDM. (...)	Anomaly	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Collection Data from Cloud Storage Collection Data from Local System	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk	2025-11-21	2026-05-13	4d7e8f3a-9c2b-4e6f-8a1d-5b9c7e2f4a8c
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
	Collect pertinent data from the configuration files	Generic	test	authentication	-	Cisco AAA · Cisco	Discovery Account Discovery Local Account Collection Data from Local System Credential Access Unsecured Credentials Credentials In Files	-	low	Austin Clark	2019-08-11	2023-01-04	cd072b25-a418-4f98-8ebc-5093fb38fe1a
	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 detects excessive kernel probe (kprobe) events in a Kubernetes cluster over a short period of time. (...)	Hunting	stable	network_device	-	Cisco	Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	-	medium	Bhavin Patel, Splunk	2026-01-05	2026-05-13	3df0e9a8-7d5e-4b2f-bcd7-bf93e671d1f2
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	-
Splunk	This analytic detects the configuration of TFTP services on Cisco IOS devices that could be used to exfiltrate sensitive configuration files. (...)	Generic	stable	configuration_change	-	Cisco IOS · Cisco	Collection Data from Local System Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Web Service	CVE-2018-0171	medium	Bhavin Patel, Michael Haag, Splunk	2025-08-21	2026-05-13	1abce487-f480-4d5f-a551-01de0bece0bd
	Detects known malicious service installs that appear in cases in which a Cobalt Strike beacon elevat (...)	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog Security	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Windows Service Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares Execution System Services Service Execution	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Wojciech Lesicki	2021-05-26	2022-11-27	d7a95147-145f-4678-b85d-d1ff4a3bb3f6
	Detects known malicious service installs that appear in cases in which a Cobalt Strike beacon elevat (...)	Generic	test	service	windows	WinEventLog System	Persistence, Privilege Escalation Create or Modify System Process Windows Service Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares Execution System Services Service Execution	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Wojciech Lesicki	2021-05-26	2022-11-27	5a105d34-05fc-401e-8553-272b45c1522d
	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 a copy command or a copy utility execution to or from an Admin share or remote	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Collection Data from Network Shared Drive Exfiltration Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares	-	medium	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), oscd.community, Teymur Kheirkhabarov @HeirhabarovT, Zach Stanford @svch0st, Nasreddine Bencherchali	2019-12-30	2025-10-22	855bc8b5-2ae8-402e-a9ed-b889e6df1900
	Detects "BugCheck" errors indicating the system rebooted due to a crash, capturing the bugcheck code, dump file path, and report ID.	Generic	experimental	-	windows	WinEventLog System	Collection Data from Local System Credential Access OS Credential Dumping Security Account Manager	-	medium	Jason Mull	2025-05-12	—	882fbe50-d8d7-4e29-ae80-0648a8556866
	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 exploitation attempt of vulnerability described in CVE-2021-3156. (...)	Unsupported	unsupported	process_creation	linux	Linux Auditd	Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	CVE-2021-3156 CVE-2021.3156	high	Bhabesh Raj	2021-02-01	2023-03-24	5ee37487-4eb8-4ac2-9be1-d7d14cdc559f
	Detects exploitation attempt of vulnerability described in CVE-2021-3156. (...)	Unsupported	unsupported	process_creation	linux	Linux Auditd	Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	CVE-2021-3156 CVE-2021.3156	high	Bhabesh Raj	2021-02-01	2023-03-24	b9748c98-9ea7-4fdb-80b6-29bed6ba71d2
	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
	Detects the use of the spoolss named pipe over SMB. (...)	Generic	test	network_connection	windows	WinEventLog Security	Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares	-	medium	OTR (Open Threat Research)	2018-11-28	2022-08-11	214e8f95-100a-4e04-bb31-ef6cba8ce07e
	Detects a threat actor creating a file named `iertutil.dll` in the `C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\` directory over the network for a DCOM InternetExplorer DLL Hijack scenario.	Generic	test	network_connection	windows	WinEventLog Security	Lateral Movement Remote Services SMB/Windows Admin Shares Distributed Component Object Model	-	high	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g, Open Threat Research (OTR)	2020-10-12	2022-11-26	c39f0c81-7348-4965-ab27-2fde35a1b641
Splunk	The following analytic detects attempts to exploit the Baron Samedit vulnerability (CVE-2021-3156) by identifying the use of the "sudoedit -s \\" command. (...)	Generic	experimental	-	-	-	Privilege Escalation Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	CVE-2021-3156	medium	Shannon Davis, Splunk	2021-01-28	2026-05-13	93fbec4e-0375-440c-8db3-4508eca470c4	-