PUNiSHERv15DEMOFEUERRADERAHTeam

Hunt Hypothesis

This YARA rule targets specific memory patterns associated with the PUNiSHER v15 malware family, indicating the presence of a known threat actor’s tooling within the environment. Proactively hunting for this signature allows the SOC team to identify dormant or active infections early, enabling rapid containment before the adversary can leverage the malware for lateral movement or data exfiltration.

YARA Rule

rule PUNiSHERv15DEMOFEUERRADERAHTeam
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { EB 04 83 A4 BC CE 60 EB 04 80 BC 04 11 E8 00 00 00 00 81 2C 24 CA C2 41 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 5D E8 00 00 00 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 81 2C 24 86 00 00 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 8B 85 9C C2 41 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 29 04 24 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 8B 04 }
	$a1 = { EB 04 83 A4 BC CE 60 EB 04 80 BC 04 11 E8 00 00 00 00 81 2C 24 CA C2 41 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 5D E8 00 00 00 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 81 2C 24 86 00 00 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 8B 85 9C C2 41 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 29 04 24 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 8B 04 24 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 89 85 9C C2 41 00 EB 04 64 6B 88 18 58 68 9F 6F 56 B6 50 E8 5D 00 00 00 EB FF 71 78 C2 50 00 EB D3 5B F3 68 89 5C 24 48 5C 24 58 FF 8D 5C 24 58 5B 83 C3 4C 75 F4 5A 8D 71 78 75 09 81 F3 EB FF 52 BA 01 00 83 EB FC 4A FF 71 0F 75 19 8B 5C 24 00 00 81 33 50 53 8B 1B 0F FF C6 75 1B 81 F3 EB 87 1C 24 8B 8B 04 24 83 EC FC EB 01 E8 83 EC FC E9 E7 00 00 00 58 EB FF F0 EB FF C0 83 E8 FD EB FF 30 E8 C9 00 00 00 89 E0 EB FF D0 EB FF 71 0F 83 C0 01 EB FF 70 F0 71 EE EB FA EB 83 C0 14 EB FF 70 ED }

condition:
		$a0 at pe.entry_point or $a1 at pe.entry_point
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
• Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
• File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
• YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints

This rule contains 2 string patterns in its detection logic.

• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

• Scenario: A developer or QA engineer executes a custom-built internal utility or demo application named PUNiSHERv15DEMOFEUERRADERAHTeam.exe (or a similar string) during a feature validation phase. The binary is signed by an internal corporate certificate and resides in a standard development directory (e.g., C:\Dev\Projects\TeamDemo\).

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files where the path matches C:\Dev\ or C:\Projects\ AND the file is signed by the internal corporate code-signing certificate (e.g., CN=InternalDevCA).

• Scenario: An IT administrator deploys a temporary troubleshooting script or diagnostic tool for a specific team (e.g., “EU Error Reader Team”) that is saved to the C:\Temp\ or C:\Users\<Admin>\Desktop\ directory. The file name matches the YARA string exactly for clarity during the incident, but it is a known, benign PowerShell or C# compiled helper.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude if the file path contains C:\Temp\ or C:\Users\ AND the parent process is a known administrative tool (e.g., powershell.exe, cmd.exe, or explorer.exe) AND the file age is less than 7 days.

• Scenario: A scheduled task or service updates a legacy application component that uses this specific version string in its binary metadata or filename. The update process copies the new binary to C:\Program Files\LegacyApp\Binaries\ and overwrites the previous version, triggering the YARA match on the new file.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude if the file path is under C:\Program Files\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\ AND the parent process is a known installer