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sphinx moth threat group file h2t.dat

yara LOW Yara-Rules
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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 detection identifies potential activity from the Sphinx Moth threat group associated with the file h2t.dat, which may indicate initial compromise or data exfiltration. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate early-stage adversarial activity before it escalates.

YARA Rule

rule Sphinx_Moth_h2t 
{ 

    meta:
        description = "sphinx moth threat group file h2t.dat" 
        author = "Kudelski Security - Nagravision SA (modified by Florian Roth)" 
        reference = "www.kudelskisecurity.com"
        date = "2015-08-06"

    strings:
        $x1 = "%s <proxy ip> <proxy port> <target ip> <target port> <cmd> [arg1 cmd] ... [argX cmd]" fullword ascii 
        $s1 = "[-] Error in connection() %d - %s" fullword ascii
        $s2 = "[-] Child process exit." fullword ascii
        $s3 = "POST http://%s:%s/ HTTP/1.1" fullword ascii
        $s4 = "pipe() to" fullword ascii
        $s5 = "pipe() from" fullword ascii
   
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 156KB and ($x1 or all of ($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_Sphinx_Moth.yar