TONESHELL is a custom backdoor that has been used since at least Q1 2021.[1]TONESHELL malware has previously been leveraged by Chinese affiliated actors identified as Mustang Panda.[2][3]
43
TechniquesTop 2%
9
TacticsTop 11%
1
Threat groupunranked
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
TONESHELL used FakeTLS headers in network packets to impersonate various versions of TLS protocols to blend in with legitimate network traffic.45TONESHELL variants have utilized FakeTLS headers with the bytes 0x17 0x03 0x03 to represent TLSv1.2 and 0x17 0x03 0x04 for TLSv1.3.5
TONESHELL has been initiated using LNK files that were programmed to display a PDF icon to entice the victim to click on the file to execute an office.exe binary.11
TONESHELL has obtained the username from an infected host.12
Discovery47 detection rules
Standing S1239
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
Techniques43Top 2%
98th percentile · 98% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics9Top 11%
89th percentile · 89% 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 / technique9medBottom 13%
13th percentile · 87% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique3medBottom 16%
16th percentile · 84% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more atomic tests per technique.
Data comps / technique4med54% 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 / technique1med57th pct
57th percentile · 57% 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 43 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
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.
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. (...)
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. (...)
The following analytic identifies the execution of the "whoami" command with the "/group" flag, where the results are passed to the "find" command in order to look for a the string "12288". (...)
This analytic detects potential reconnaissance activities on Cisco ASA devices by identifying execution of multiple information-gathering "show" commands within a short timeframe. (...)