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HIGHNOON is a Windows backdoor associated with APT41, also tracked as Wicked Panda and Winnti. It has been used in post-compromise operations during the group’s espionage and financially motivated intrusions, including activity observed around 2020–2021. HIGHNOON has been documented as a malware variant used to enumerate active Remote Desktop Protocol sessions on compromised hosts, supporting operator situational awareness and follow-on intrusion activity. Reported tradecraft includes DLL hijacking, import address table modification, decryption of protected components using DPAPI or AES, and reflective injection. Use of WinDivert components in both user mode and kernel mode has also been associated with HIGHNOON, indicating an emphasis on stealthy traffic handling or host interaction. The malware fits within APT41’s broader pattern of using custom backdoors alongside loaders, living-off-the-land techniques, and other modular tooling against a wide range of sectors including government, telecommunications, healthcare, finance, technology, education, media, manufacturing, and research organizations.
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.
The group uses a variety of TTPs including but not limited to LoTL tactics, phishing, ransomware, cryptocurrency mining, supply chain attacks, China Chopper, Gh0st RaT, PlugX, HighNoon, Derusbi, BioPass RAT, RedXOR, and ShadowPad.
1 indicator attributed across vendor reports, sandbox runs, and researcher write-ups. Full values are available in Mallory.
File hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) from samples and reports.
4 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
The group uses a variety of TTPs including but not limited to LoTL tactics, phishing, ransomware, cryptocurrency mining, supply chain attacks, China Chopper, Gh0st RaT, PlugX, HighNoon, Derusbi, BioPass RAT, RedXOR, and ShadowPad.
Malware variant used for discovery of active Remote Desktop (RDP) sessions on victim systems.
Malware variant used for host discovery, specifically enumerating active RDP sessions (RDP session discovery).
A backdoor/loader family using DLL hijacking, IAT modification, DPAPI/AES decryption, reflective injection, and WinDivert components in user and kernel mode for packet handling.
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.