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Tiny Bot used by attackers in Operation Cleaver

yara HIGH Yara-Rules
backdoorcommunity
This rule was pulled from an open-source repository and enriched with AI. Validate in a test environment before deploying to production.
View original rule at Yara-Rules →
Retrieved: 2026-05-31T23:00:00Z · Confidence: medium

Hunt Hypothesis

The detection identifies potential command and control activity associated with the Tiny Bot used by attackers in Operation Cleaver, indicating possible ongoing malicious operations. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate advanced persistent threats leveraging this botnet infrastructure.

YARA Rule

rule OPCLEAVER_TinyZBot
{

    meta:
        description = "Tiny Bot used by attackers in Operation Cleaver"
        reference = "http://cylance.com/assets/Cleaver/Cylance_Operation_Cleaver_Report.pdf"
        date = "2014/12/02"
        author = "Cylance Inc."
        score = "70"

    strings:
        $s1 = "NetScp" wide
        $s2 = "TinyZBot.Properties.Resources.resources"
        $s3 = "Aoao WaterMark"
        $s4 = "Run_a_exe"
        $s5 = "netscp.exe"
        $s6 = "get_MainModule_WebReference_DefaultWS"
        $s7 = "remove_CheckFileMD5Completed"
        $s8 = "http://tempuri.org/"
        $s9 = "Zhoupin_Cleaver"

    condition:
        (($s1 and $s2) or ($s3 and $s4 and $s5) or ($s6 and $s7 and $s8) or $s9)
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

This rule contains 9 string patterns in its detection logic.

References

False Positive Guidance

Original source: https://github.com/Yara-Rules/rules/blob/main/malware/APT_OPCleaver.yar