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StrifeWater is a Windows remote access trojan associated with Moses Staff operations and observed alongside tooling such as PyDCrypt and DCSrv. It has been used in early attack stages as a stealthy implant that supports operator control while helping obscure activity. Reported functionality includes execution of remote commands, collection of host data such as the current username and time zone, screen capture, and transmission of collected data and files to command-and-control infrastructure. StrifeWater has also been observed establishing persistence through a scheduled task and using benign-looking naming to masquerade as a legitimate Windows application. The malware uses Windows APIs for execution and can vary its sleep timing, indicating basic defense-evasion tradecraft. Its known use is linked to intrusions targeting Israeli organizations and other victims in campaigns attributed to Moses Staff, a cluster widely assessed as aligned with Iranian interests.
Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
2 distinct threat actors attributed by public researchers. Open in Mallory to see the full evidence chain and overlapping campaigns.
Although the threat intelligence research community has identified custom offensive tooling observed in Moses Staff attacks, such as StrifeWater, PyDCrypt and DCSrv, we do not exclude the possibility of Moses Staff and Abraham’s Ax sharing tooling and operational practices making accurate clustering challenging at this time.
StrifeWater is a stealthy Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that is used in the initial stage of the attack to cover traces. In addition, it has the ability to execute remote commands and capture the screen.
21 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
“Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.” / “APT29 used scheduler and schtasks to create new tasks on remote host as part of their lateral movement… updating an existing legitimate task to execute their tools and then returned the scheduled task to its original configuration.”
During the 2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.
During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team used the xp_cmdshell command in MS-SQL. During the 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks, the adversaries leveraged PsExec to run cmd.exe commands on multiple victim machines. Numerous malware families and groups are described as using cmd.exe, cmd /c, Windows command shell, or command-line interfaces to execute commands, payloads, reconnaissance, persistence, cleanup, and ransomware actions.
“Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.” / “APT29 used scheduler and schtasks to create new tasks on remote host as part of their lateral movement… updating an existing legitimate task to execute their tools and then returned the scheduled task to its original configuration.”
“Sandworm Team leveraged Scheduled Tasks through a Group Policy Object (GPO) to execute CaddyWiper at a predetermined time.” / “APT29 used scheduler and schtasks to create new tasks on remote host as part of their lateral movement… updating an existing legitimate task to execute their tools and then returned the scheduled task to its original configuration.”
During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, DLLs and EXEs with filenames associated with common electric power sector protocols were used to masquerade files.
Many entries explicitly describe deleting artifacts 'to cover tracks,' 'evade detection,' 'remove evidence,' 'reduce their footprint,' or as part of 'post-intrusion cleanup process.' Examples include APT28 deleting files to cover tracks, FIN5 using SDelete to clean up the environment, and Dragonfly deleting operational files as part of cleanup.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting the username, identifying the current user, enumerating logged-on users, or running commands such as whoami, query user, and quser to determine user context on compromised systems.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting host details such as hostname, OS version, architecture, CPU, memory, BIOS, language, and other machine characteristics; e.g., "Action RAT has the ability to collect the hostname, OS version, and OS architecture of an infected host."
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors listing files and directories, enumerating drives, searching for files by extension/name/path, retrieving file metadata, and browsing file systems (for example: "APT28 has used Forfiles to locate PDF, Excel, and Word documents during collection" and "cmd can be used to find files and directories with native functionality such as dir commands").
Multiple malware and threat groups are described as collecting/deriving local system time, date, timestamp, tick count, or time zone (e.g., "used time /t and net time \ip/hostname for system time discovery"; "collects the timestamp from the victim’s machine"; "can collect the time zone information from the system").
ADVSTORESHELL exfiltrates data over the same channel used for C2... Agrius exfiltrated staged data using tools such as Putty and WinSCP, communicating with command and control servers... numerous malware and groups sent victim data, files, credentials, or host information over existing C2 channels.
19 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
... StrifeWater ... (v1.0→v1.1) ...
StrifeWater (v1.0→v1.1)
Custom offensive tooling observed in Moses Staff attacks; the appendix explicitly describes it as 'StrifeWater RAT' and ties it to ransomware operations.
Backdoor that can collect the username from the victim machine.
Match every observed IP, domain, and hash against your live telemetry.
Named campaigns wielding this family, with evidence pinned to each claim.
CVEs this family uses for access and lateral movement.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Every documented technique, ranked by evidence weight.
Reddit, Mastodon, and CTI community discussion around this family.