malware
TrailBlazer is a modular malware that has been used by APT29 since at least 2019.[1]
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
TrailBlazer can masquerade its C2 traffic as legitimate Google Notifications HTTP requests.2
TrailBlazer has used random identifier strings to obscure its C2 operations and result codes.3
TrailBlazer has used filenames that match the name of the compromised system in attempt to avoid detection.4
TrailBlazer has used HTTP requests for C2.5
TrailBlazer has the ability to use WMI for persistence.6
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.
23rd percentile · 77% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.
32nd percentile · 68% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more tactics spanned.
61% of the population shares a single value across only 22 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
85% of the population shares a single value across only 8 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
34th percentile · 66% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more detection rules per technique.
7th percentile · 93% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more atomic tests per technique.
54% of the population shares a single value across only 11 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
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 5 Enterprise techniques.
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
129 distinct rules cover the 5 techniques recorded for this malware. 94 Sigma · 35 Splunk.
| Select | Title | Description | Category | Status | Event | OS | Product | MITRE ATT&CK | CVEs | Severity | Author | Created | Updated | ID | Refs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Detects suspicious user agent strings used in APT malware in proxy logs | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | 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 | - | - | - | high | Thomas Patzke | 2019-11-12 | 2023-05-18 | 5ba715b6-71b7-44fd-8245-f66893e81b3d | ||||
Detects DNS queries for the malicious C2 domain associated with the plain-crypto-js/Axios npm package supply chain compromise. (...) | Emerging | experimental | dns | - | - | - | high | Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems) | 2026-04-01 | — | 73e5d24f-493f-4092-bd2f-c72cabda40ee | ||||
Detects Bitsadmin connections to IP addresses instead of FQDN names | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | 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 | - | - | - | high | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tim Shelton | 2019-03-07 | 2026-09-30 | 9eb68894-7476-4cd6-8752-23b51f5883a7 | ||||
Detects HTTP request used by Chafer malware to receive data from its C2. | Emerging | test | proxy | - | - | - | 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 | - | medium | frack113 | 2022-01-23 | 2025-07-18 | d4488827-73af-4f8d-9244-7b7662ef046e | ||||
Splunk | This analytic detects network connections initiated by binaries that are not typically associated wi (...) | Anomaly | stable | network_connection | - | Cisco NVM · Cisco | - | medium | Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk | 2025-07-01 | 2026-09-22 | c6db35af-8a0e-4b61-88ed-738e66f15715 | |||
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 | - | 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 | - | 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 | - | 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 | - | medium | Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk | 2025-04-03 | 2026-05-13 | 8c15183e-2e70-4db4-86c3-88f8d9129b66 | |||
Splunk | The following analytic detects outbound connections initiated by command-line tools such as curl or wget. (...) | Anomaly | stable | firewall | - | Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco | - | 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 | - | medium | Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems) | 2023-12-20 | — | a1d9eec5-33b2-4177-8d24-27fe754d0812 | ||||
Detects a CodePage modification using the "mode.com" utility. (...) | Hunting | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | low | Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), Joseliyo Sanchez, @Joseliyo_Jstnk | 2024-01-19 | — | d48c5ffa-3b02-4c0f-9a9e-3c275650dd0e | ||||
Detects a CodePage modification using the "mode.com" utility to Russian language. (...) | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | medium | Joseliyo Sanchez, @Joseliyo_Jstnk | 2024-01-17 | — | 12fbff88-16b5-4b42-9754-cd001a789fb3 | ||||
Detects Turla ComRAT network communication. | Emerging | test | proxy | - | - | - | high | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2020-05-26 | 2024-02-26 | 7857f021-007f-4928-8b2c-7aedbe64bb82 | ||||
Detects uses of the createdump.exe LOLOBIN utility to dump process memory | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | high | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems) | 2022-01-04 | 2022-08-19 | 515c8be5-e5df-4c5e-8f6d-a4a2f05e4b48 | ||||
Detects suspicious user agent strings used by crypto miners in proxy logs | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | 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 | - | medium | frack113 | 2022-01-23 | 2023-02-21 | 3286d37a-00fd-41c2-a624-a672dcd34e60 | ||||
Detects DNS queries initiated by "QuickAssist.exe" to Microsoft Quick Assist primary endpoint that is used to establish a session. | Generic | experimental | dns | windows | Sysmon | - | low | Muhammad Faisal (@faisalusuf) | 2024-12-19 | — | 882e858a-3233-4ba8-855e-2f3d3575803d | ||||
Detects DNS query requests to Devtunnels domains. (...) | Generic | test | dns | windows | Sysmon | - | medium | citron_ninja | 2023-10-25 | 2023-11-20 | 1cb0c6ce-3d00-44fc-ab9c-6d6d577bf20b | ||||
Detects DNS query requests to Visual Studio Code tunnel domains. (...) | Generic | test | dns | windows | Sysmon | - | medium | citron_ninja | 2023-10-25 | 2023-11-20 | b3e6418f-7c7a-4fad-993a-93b65027a9f1 | ||||
Detects the use of "DumpMinitool.exe" a tool that allows the dump of process memory via the use of t (...) | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | medium | Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2022-04-06 | 2023-04-12 | dee0a7a3-f200-4112-a99b-952196d81e42 | ||||
Splunk | The following analytic identifies the creation of executables or scripts in suspicious file paths on Windows systems. (...) | Anomaly | stable | file_event | windows | Sysmon | - | medium | Teoderick Contreras, Splunk | 2021-05-07 | 2026-08-14 | a7e3f0f0-ae42-11eb-b245-acde48001122 | |||
Splunk | The following analytic identifies the creation of executables or scripts in temporary file paths on Windows systems. (...) | Anomaly | stable | file_event | windows | Sysmon | - | medium | Teoderick Contreras, Splunk | 2021-05-07 | 2026-08-14 | e0422b71-2c05-4f32-8754-01fb415f49c9 | |||
Detects suspicious user agent strings used by exploit / pentest frameworks like Metasploit in proxy (...) | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | high | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2017-07-08 | 2025-01-18 | fdd1bfb5-f60b-4a35-910e-f36ed3d0b32f | ||||
Detects a command line process that uses explorer.exe to launch arbitrary commands or binaries,
whic (...) | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | medium | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), @gott_cyber | 2019-06-29 | 2025-10-31 | 949f1ffb-6e85-4f00-ae1e-c3c5b190d605 | ||||
Detects usage of findstr to identify and execute a lnk file as seen within the HHS redirect attack | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | medium | Trent Liffick | 2020-05-01 | 2024-01-15 | 33339be3-148b-4e16-af56-ad16ec6c7e7b | ||||
Detects the execution of "forfiles" from a non-default location, in order to potentially spawn a custom "cmd.exe" from the current working directory. | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | high | Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), Anish Bogati | 2024-01-05 | — | f53714ec-5077-420e-ad20-907ff9bb2958 | ||||
Detects Baby Shark C2 Framework default communication patterns | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | critical | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2021-06-09 | 2024-02-15 | 304810ed-8853-437f-9e36-c4975c3dfd7e | ||||
Detects cobalt strike malleable profiles patterns (URI, User-Agents, Methods). | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | high | Markus Neis, Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2024-02-15 | — | f3f21ce1-cdef-4bfc-8328-ed2e826f5fac | ||||
Detects user agent and URI paths used by empire agents | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | high | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2020-07-13 | 2024-02-26 | b923f7d6-ac89-4a50-a71a-89fb846b4aa8 | ||||
Detects suspicious use of XORDump process memory dumping utility | Generic | test | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | high | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2022-01-28 | 2023-02-08 | 66e563f9-1cbd-4a22-a957-d8b7c0f44372 | ||||
Splunk | This Splunk query analyzes web logs to identify and categorize user agents, detecting various types of c2 frameworks. (...) | Generic | stable | webserver | - | Suricata | - | medium | Ravent Tait, Splunk | 2026-01-06 | 2026-09-22 | 229dc225-6abe-4d28-89fd-edf874086162 | |||
Splunk | Detects when a request has more than one of the same header. (...) | Anomaly | stable | network_connection | - | Suricata | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2025-10-21 | 2026-05-13 | 1606cc5b-fd5f-4865-9fe3-0ed1eaec2df6 | |||
Splunk | This Splunk query analyzes web logs to identify and categorize user agents, detecting various types of malware. (...) | Generic | stable | webserver | - | Suricata | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2026-01-06 | 2026-09-22 | 8c4866e4-f488-4253-8537-7dc4f954c292 | |||
Splunk | HTTP request smuggling is a technique for interfering with the way a web site processes sequences of HTTP requests that are received from one or more users. (...) | Generic | stable | network_connection | - | Suricata | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2025-10-21 | 2026-05-13 | 97d85f98-9d15-41a0-8682-7030454875e7 | |||
Splunk | The following analytic detects HTTP POST requests containing heavily encoded data in the post body, specifically looking for sequences of hex-encoded bytes or base64-encoded strings. (...) | Anomaly | stable | network_connection | - | Zeek | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-12 | 0590881d-7b81-48dd-9674-1f23f7db5d40 | |||
Splunk | This Splunk query analyzes web logs to identify and categorize user agents, detecting various types of unwanted applications. (...) | Anomaly | stable | webserver | - | Suricata | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2026-01-06 | 2026-09-22 | 21af5447-734f-4549-956b-7a255cb2b032 | |||
Splunk | This detection identifies rapid-fire POST request attacks where an attacker sends more than 20 POST requests within a 5-second window, potentially attempting to exploit race conditions or overwhelm request handling. (...) | Anomaly | stable | network_connection | - | Nginx | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2025-10-21 | 2026-05-13 | c8c987d6-3a1a-4555-9a52-eea0741b6113 | |||
Splunk | Detects attempts to exploit a request smuggling technique against IIS that leverages a Windows quirk where requests for reserved Windows device names such as "/con" trigger an early server response before the request body is received. (...) | Generic | stable | webserver | - | Suricata | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2025-10-21 | 2026-05-13 | 1e45e6a8-110b-4886-b815-8d69cf35bf0a | |||
Detects a potentially suspicious empty user agent strings in proxy log. (...) | Generic | test | proxy | - | - | - | medium | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2017-07-08 | 2021-11-27 | 21e44d78-95e7-421b-a464-ffd8395659c4 | ||||
Splunk | This Splunk query analyzes web logs to identify and categorize user agents, detecting various types of Remote Monitoring and Mangement applications. (...) | Anomaly | stable | webserver | - | Suricata | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2026-01-06 | 2026-09-22 | 61884b02-0dcf-44c5-9094-db33bac09fa6 | |||
Splunk | This Splunk query analyzes web access logs to identify and categorize non-browser user agents, detecting various types of security tools, scripting languages, automation frameworks, and suspicious patterns. (...) | Anomaly | stable | webserver | - | Nginx | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2025-10-21 | 2026-09-22 | 04430b4e-5ca8-4e88-98b5-d6bcf54f8393 | |||
Detects suspicious interactive bash as a parent to rather uncommon child processes | Generic | test | process_creation | linux | Sysmon | - | medium | Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) | 2022-03-14 | — | ea3ecad2-db86-4a89-ad0b-132a10d2db55 | ||||
Detects the execution of the "curl.exe" command, referencing "SOCKS" and ".onion" domains, which could be indicative of Kalambur backdoor activity. | Emerging | experimental | process_creation | windows | Sysmon · WinEventLog Security | - | high | Arda Buyukkaya (EclecticIQ) | 2025-02-11 | — | e99375eb-3ee0-407a-9f90-79569cc6a01c | ||||
Detects network connections with a suspicious user-agent string containing "katz-ontop", which may indicate Katz Stealer activity. | Emerging | experimental | - | - | HTTP · Zeek | - | high | Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems) | 2025-05-22 | — | 834c6d2f-5e98-4b2a-b453-0c4f234afedd | ||||
Splunk | The following analytic detects the creation or overwrite of commonly targeted Linux system binaries such as cat, ls, cp, ps, mv, netstat, ss, and lsof. (...) | Anomaly | stable | file_event | linux | Sysmon | - | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2026-07-08 | 2026-07-08 | a806d611-ea81-4d8a-9b9b-fbf5b6ec520a | |||
Splunk | The following analytic detects the creation of sensitive system files such as nsswitch.conf, passwd, shadow, sudoers, and NSS shared libraries outside of their canonical /etc or /var/lib/docker paths. (...) | Anomaly | stable | file_event | linux | Sysmon | medium | Raven Tait, Splunk | 2026-07-08 | 2026-07-08 | 250fd1b5-e62a-4515-baff-3010b52b4c12 |