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Chinese Hacktool Set - file CookieTools2.exe

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: 2026-07-17T11:00:00Z · Confidence: medium

Hunt Hypothesis

This hunt targets adversary activity involving the deployment of the specific Chinese hacktool artifact CookieTools2.exe, which is often utilized for credential harvesting and session manipulation within compromised endpoints. Proactively hunting for this file in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC team to identify early-stage reconnaissance or lateral movement attempts by threat actors leveraging region-specific tooling before they escalate into higher-severity incidents.

YARA Rule

rule CookieTools2 {
	meta:
		description = "Chinese Hacktool Set - file CookieTools2.exe"
		author = "Florian Roth"
		reference = "http://tools.zjqhr.com/"
		date = "2015-06-13"
		hash = "cb67797f229fdb92360319e01277e1345305eb82"
	strings:
		$s1 = "www.gxgl.com&www.gxgl.net" fullword wide
		$s2 = "ip.asp?IP=" fullword ascii
		$s3 = "MSIE 5.5;" fullword ascii
		$s4 = "SOFTWARE\\Borland\\" fullword ascii
	condition:
		uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 700KB and all of them
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

This rule contains 4 string patterns in its detection logic.

References

False Positive Guidance

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the Chinese Hacktool Set - CookieTools2.exe detection rule, tailored for an enterprise environment:

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