← Back to SOC feed Coverage →

Symantec Waterbug Attack - FA malware variant

yara LOW Yara-Rules
community
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: 2026-06-05T23:00:00Z · Confidence: medium

Hunt Hypothesis

The hypothesis is that the detection identifies potential FA malware variant activity associated with the Symantec Waterbug attack, which may indicate adversary persistence or data exfiltration. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate early-stage compromises that could lead to more severe breaches.

YARA Rule

rule WaterBug_fa_malware 
{ 

    meta: 
        description = "Symantec Waterbug Attack - FA malware variant"
        author = "Symantec Security Response"
        date = "22.01.2015"
        reference = "http://t.co/rF35OaAXrl"

    strings:
        $mz = "MZ"
        $string1 = "C:\\proj\\drivers\\fa _ 2009\\objfre\\i386\\atmarpd.pdb"
        $string2 = "d:\\proj\\cn\\fa64\\"
        $string3 = "sengoku_Win32.sys\x00"
        $string4 = "rk_ntsystem.c"
        $string5 = "\\uroboros\\"
        $string6 = "shell.{F21EDC09-85D3-4eb9-915F-1AFA2FF28153}"

    condition:
        ($mz at 0) and (any of ($string*))
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

This rule contains 7 string patterns in its detection logic.

References

False Positive Guidance

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