Suspicious Certutil URL Download to Public Directory (Soco404 Cryptomining)

ATT&CK techniques

C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1105Ingress Tool Transfer
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects certutil used with its urlcache flag to fetch a remote payload, the download technique of the Soco404 campaign that staged binaries under the Public user directory. It matters because certutil acting as a downloader is a living off the land pattern used to pull cryptomining payloads onto Windows hosts.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1105 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious BITSAdmin File Transfer Into ProgramData via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Suspicious PowerShell Download Cradle via IEX and DownloadString (via process_creation)

Suspicious Remote File Download via certutil URLCache (via process_creation)

Suspicious WebDAV Retrieval via rundll32 and davclnt.dll (via process_creation)

Suspicious PowerShell Download to Temp and In-Memory Execution via IEX (via process_creation)

Suspicious Certutil URL Download to Public Directory (Soco404 Cryptomining)

Pivot detection · T1105 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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