malware

PowerPunch S0685

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 18 February 2022
Last modified: 16 April 2025

PowerPunch is a lightweight downloader that has been used by Gamaredon Group since at least 2021.[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.

Standing S0685

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.

Select	Description	Category	Status	Event	OS	Product	MITRE ATT&CK	CVEs	Severity	Author	Created	Updated	ID	Refs
	Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe	Generic	test	ps_module	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g	2019-08-11	2025-10-17	64e8e417-c19a-475a-8d19-98ea705394cc
	Detects alternate PowerShell hosts potentially bypassing detections looking for powershell.exe	Generic	test	pipe_created	windows	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g, Tim Shelton	2019-09-12	2025-10-07	58cb02d5-78ce-4692-b3e1-dce850aae41a
	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 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 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
	focuses on trivial artifacts observed in variants of prevalent offensive ps1 payloads, including Cob (...)	Generic	test	ps_module	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	critical	ok @securonix invrep_de, oscd.community	2020-10-09	2022-12-25	8d31a8ce-46b5-4dd6-bdc3-680931f1db86
	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 default file names outputted by the BloodHound collection tool SharpHound	Generic	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Discovery Account Discovery Local Account Domain Account Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Discovery Domain Trust Discovery Discovery Permission Groups Discovery Local Groups Domain Groups	-	high	C.J. May	2022-08-09	2026-02-19	02773bed-83bf-469f-b7ff-e676e7d78bab
	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 powershell execution with that make use of to the bxor (Bitwise XOR). (...)	Hunting	test	ps_classic_start	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	low	Teymur Kheirkhabarov, Harish Segar	2020-06-29	2024-12-11	812837bb-b17f-45e9-8bd0-0ec35d2e3bd6
	Detects calls to cmdlets that are used to export certificates from the local certificate store. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Credential Access Unsecured Credentials Private Keys	-	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-05-18	—	9e716b33-63b2-46da-86a4-bd3c3b9b5dfb
	Detects changing the PowerShell script execution policy to a potentially insecure level using the "-ExecutionPolicy" flag.	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	frack113	2021-11-01	2025-10-07	87e3c4e8-a6a8-4ad9-bb4f-46e7ff99a180
	Detects changing the PowerShell script execution policy to a potentially insecure level using the "Set-ExecutionPolicy" cmdlet.	Generic	test	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	frack113	2021-10-20	2023-12-14	61d0475c-173f-4844-86f7-f3eebae1c66b
	Detects execution of ChromeLoader malware via a registered scheduled task	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Execution, Persistence, Privilege Escalation Scheduled Task/Job Scheduled Task Persistence Software Extensions	-	high	@kostastsale	2022-01-10	—	0a74c5a9-1b71-4475-9af2-7829d320d5c2
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	This analytic detects exploitation activity of CVE-2023-27532 using Cisco Secure Firewall Intrusion Events. (...)	Generic	stable	firewall	-	Cisco Secure Firewall · Cisco	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Initial Access Exploit Public-Facing Application Lateral Movement Exploitation of Remote Services Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory	CVE-2023-27532	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, Talos NTDR	2025-04-16	2026-05-13	7b7c2e92-f0b2-48d2-9c9b-b8de52b6b2ae
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	-
	Detects Windows command lines that miss a space before or after the /c flag when running a command using the cmd.exe. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-08-23	2026-05-13	a16980c2-0c56-4de0-9a79-17971979efdd
	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 "ConvertTo-SecureString" cmdlet via the commandline. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Stealth Obfuscated Files or Information	-	medium	Teymur Kheirkhabarov (idea), Vasiliy Burov (rule), oscd.community, Tim Shelton	2020-10-11	2023-02-01	74403157-20f5-415d-89a7-c505779585cf
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
	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 files created during the local privilege exploitation of CVE-2022-24527 Microsoft Connected (...)	Emerging	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	CVE-2022-24527	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2022-04-13	—	e0a41412-c69a-446f-8e6e-0e6d7483dad7
	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
Splunk	The following analytic detects the use of the Certify tool via an in-memory PowerShell function to enumerate Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) environments. (...)	Generic	stable	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Credential Access Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates	-	medium	Steven Dick	2023-07-28	2026-05-13	f533ca6c-9440-4686-80cb-7f294c07812a
Splunk	The following analytic detects suspicious PowerShell execution indicative of PowerShell-Empire activity. (...)	Generic	stable	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell	-	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2021-06-09	2026-05-13	bc1dc6b8-c954-11eb-bade-acde48001122
Splunk	The following analytic detects the execution of Mimikatz commands via PowerShell by leveraging PowerShell Script Block Logging (EventCode=4104). (...)	Generic	stable	ps_script	windows	PowerShell	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Credential Access OS Credential Dumping	-	medium	Michael Haag, Splunk	2021-06-09	2026-05-13	8148c29c-c952-11eb-9255-acde48001122
	This rule detects execution of a PowerShell code through the sqlps.exe utility, which is included in the standard set of utilities supplied with the MSSQL Server. (...)	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution Command and Scripting Interpreter PowerShell Execution, Stealth Trusted Developer Utilities Proxy Execution	-	medium	Agro (@agro_sev) oscd.community	2020-10-10	2022-12-09	0152550d-3a26-4efd-9f0e-54a0b28ae2f3

Title

Description

PowerPunch S0685

PowerPunch MITRE reference S0685

Standing S0685

Reach

Coverage

PowerPunch detections S0685