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Winexe tool used by Sofacy group in Bundestag APT

yara HIGH 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: 2026-06-04T11:00:00Z · Confidence: medium

Hunt Hypothesis

The use of the Winexe tool in a network environment may indicate the presence of Sofacy group activity associated with the Bundestag APT, as this tool is commonly leveraged for remote code execution and lateral movement. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to detect and mitigate potential advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns targeting critical infrastructure.

YARA Rule

rule Sofacy_Bundestag_Winexe
{

    meta:
        description = "Winexe tool used by Sofacy group in Bundestag APT"
        author = "Florian Roth"
        reference = "http://dokumente.linksfraktion.de/inhalt/report-orig.pdf"
        date = "2015-06-19"
        hash = "5130f600cd9a9cdc82d4bad938b20cbd2f699aadb76e7f3f1a93602330d9997d"
        score = 70
  
    strings:
        $s1 = "\\\\.\\pipe\\ahexec" fullword ascii 
        $s2 = "implevel" fullword ascii
  
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 115KB and all of them
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

This rule contains 2 string patterns in its detection logic.

References

False Positive Guidance

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