malware

PowGoop S1046

Type: malware
Platform: Windows
Created: 29 September 2022
Last modified: 16 April 2025

PowGoop is a loader that consists of a DLL loader and a PowerShell-based downloader; it has been used by MuddyWater as their main loader.[1][2]

Techniques38th pct

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 S1046

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 when a Microsoft Cloud App Security reported when users were active from an IP address that has been identified as an anonymous proxy IP address.	Generic	test	-	-	Azure Threat Management · Microsoft 365	Command and Control Encrypted Channel	-	medium	Austin Songer @austinsonger	2021-08-23	2022-10-09	d8b0a4fe-07a8-41be-bd39-b14afa025d95
	Detects when a Microsoft Cloud App Security reported when an activity occurs from a location that wasn't recently or never visited by any user in the organization.	Generic	test	-	-	Azure Threat Management · Microsoft 365	Command and Control Encrypted Channel	-	medium	Austin Songer @austinsonger	2021-08-23	2022-10-09	0f2468a2-5055-4212-a368-7321198ee706
	Detects when a Microsoft Cloud App Security reported users were active from an IP address identified as risky by Microsoft Threat Intelligence. (...)	Generic	test	-	-	Azure Threat Detection · Microsoft 365	Command and Control Encrypted Channel	-	medium	Austin Songer @austinsonger	2021-08-23	2022-10-09	a3501e8e-af9e-43c6-8cd6-9360bdaae498
	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 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 the execution of DLL side-loading malware used by threat group Emissary Panda aka APT27	Emerging	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Execution, Stealth Hijack Execution Flow DLL	-	critical	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)	2018-09-03	2023-03-09	9aa01d62-7667-4d3b-acb8-8cb5103e2014
	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 potential DLL sideloading activity via the Aruba Networks Virtual Intranet Access "arubanets (...)	Generic	test	image_load	windows	Sysmon	Execution, Stealth Hijack Execution Flow DLL	-	high	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2023-01-22	2023-03-15	90ae0469-0cee-4509-b67f-e5efcef040f7
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 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 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
	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
	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
	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 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
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
	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
	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
	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	This analytic detects network connections initiated by binaries that are not typically associated wi (...)	Anomaly	stable	network_connection	-	Cisco NVM · Cisco	Stealth Masquerading Privilege Escalation, Stealth Process Injection	-	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	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 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 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 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
	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
	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 CodePage modification using the "mode.com" utility. (...)	Hunting	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth Masquerading	-	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	Stealth Masquerading	-	medium	Joseliyo Sanchez, @Joseliyo_Jstnk	2024-01-17	—	12fbff88-16b5-4b42-9754-cd001a789fb3
	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 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 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
	Detects uses of the createdump.exe LOLOBIN utility to dump process memory	Generic	test	process_creation	windows	Sysmon · WinEventLog Security	Stealth Masquerading Credential Access OS Credential Dumping LSASS Memory	-	high	Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)	2022-01-04	2022-08-19	515c8be5-e5df-4c5e-8f6d-a4a2f05e4b48
	Detects creation of specific system DLL files that are usually not present on the system (or at least not in system directories) but may be loaded by legitimate processes. (...)	Generic	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Execution, Stealth Hijack Execution Flow DLL	CVE-2020-7315	medium	Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), fornotes	2022-12-01	2026-01-24	df6ecb8b-7822-4f4b-b412-08f524b4576c
	Detects deployments of pods within the kube-system namespace, which could be intended to imitate system pods. (...)	Generic	test	-	-	Kubernetes Audit · Kubernetes	Stealth Masquerading Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location	-	medium	Leo Tsaousis (@laripping)	2024-03-26	—	a80d927d-ac6e-443f-a867-e8d6e3897318
	Detects the creation of a file named "WerFault.exe" or "wer.dll" in an uncommon folder, which could be a sign of WerFault DLL hijacking.	Generic	test	file_event	windows	Sysmon	Execution, Stealth Hijack Execution Flow DLL	-	medium	frack113	2022-05-09	2026-05-18	28a452f3-786c-4fd8-b8f2-bddbe9d616d1
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
	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

Title

Description

PowGoop S1046

PowGoop S1046

PowGoop MITRE reference S1046

Standing S1046

Reach

Coverage

PowGoop detections S1046