Suspicious Delayed Expansion Command Obfuscation Building PowerShell via Amatera Stealer

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-22
Updated
2026-09-22

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Persistence

  5. Priv Esc

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects cmd.exe using delayed variable expansion to concatenate fragmented strings that reassemble the word powershell at runtime. The Amatera Stealer 4.0.2 loader splits pow and ershell across set commands to defeat static string matching before invoking an encoded PowerShell stage. This command-line obfuscation is a strong indicator of staged stealer execution.

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Pivot detection · T1059.001 · 9 related

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