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Remote Access Tool used in APT Terracotta

yara LOW Yara-Rules
aptcommunity
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: 2026-06-04T23:00:00Z · Confidence: medium

Hunt Hypothesis

The hypothesis is that the detected Remote Access Tool is associated with the APT Terracotta group and may indicate initial compromise or command and control activity. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify potential APT activity early and prevent further lateral movement or data exfiltration.

YARA Rule

rule RemoteExec_Tool 
{

    meta:
        description = "Remote Access Tool used in APT Terracotta"
        author = "Florian Roth"
        reference = "https://blogs.rsa.com/terracotta-vpn-enabler-of-advanced-threat-anonymity/"
        date = "2015-08-04"
        hash = "a550131e106ff3c703666f15d55d9bc8c816d1cb9ac1b73c2e29f8aa01e53b78"

    strings:
        $s0 = "cmd.exe /q /c \"%s\"" fullword ascii 
        $s1 = "\\\\.\\pipe\\%s%s%d" fullword ascii 
        $s2 = "This is a service executable! Couldn't start directly." fullword ascii 
        $s3 = "\\\\.\\pipe\\TermHlp_communicaton" fullword ascii 
        $s4 = "TermHlp_stdout" fullword ascii 
        $s5 = "TermHlp_stdin" fullword ascii

    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 75KB and 4 of ($s*)
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

This rule contains 6 string patterns in its detection logic.

References

False Positive Guidance

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