STEADYPULSE is a web shell that infects targeted Pulse Secure VPN servers through modification of a legitimate Perl script that was used as early as 2020 including in activity against US Defense Industrial Base (DIB) entities.[1]
5
TechniquesBottom 23%
3
TacticsBottom 21%
0
Threat groupsNone recorded
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
STEADYPULSE is a web shell that can enable the execution of arbitrary commands on compromised web servers.6
Persistence54 detection rules
Standing S1112
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
Techniques5Bottom 23%
23rd percentile · 77% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more Enterprise techniques.
Tactics3Bottom 21%
21st percentile · 79% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more tactics spanned.
Threat groups061% 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 / technique54medTop 6%
94th percentile · 94% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many detection rules per technique or fewer.
Tests / technique3medBottom 16%
16th percentile · 84% 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 5 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
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. (...)
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.
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. (...)
Adversaries may communicate using application layer protocols associated with web traffic to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. (...)
This analytic detects the usage of the Utility osascript on a macOS device initiated a network connection lasting longer than 10 minutes (600 seconds). (...)
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. (...)
The following analytic detects the use of known suspicious SSL certificates in any observed event where the SSL_CertFingerprint field is present. (...)
The following analytic detects potential reverse shell activity by identifying connections involving ports commonly associated with remote access tools, shell listeners, or tunneling utilities. (...)
The following analytic detects connections with a high Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) threat confidence score, indicating potentially malicious behavior within encrypted traffic. (...)
This analytic detects HTTP requests to privileged execution paths on Cisco routers, specifically targeting the `/level/15/exec/-/*` endpoint using Cisco Secure Firewall Intrusion Events. (...)
This analytic identifies Snort intrusion signatures that have been triggered by ten or more distinct internal IP addresses within a one-hour window. (...)
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). (...)