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CARROTBAT is a custom Windows dropper associated with North Korea-focused intrusion activity and used in campaigns tied to TA406/Kimsuky-related operations as well as the broader Fractured Block cluster. It was used in spearphishing campaigns built around geopolitical and cryptocurrency-themed lures, particularly subjects related to South Korea, North Korea, and regional political developments. The malware presents an embedded decoy document to the victim while executing commands to retrieve and launch additional payloads, functioning as an initial-stage delivery mechanism rather than the final implant.
CARROTBAT supports multiple decoy document formats and stores decoy content within the executable. It has been observed parsing embedded metadata to reconstruct and write the lure document to disk, then opening it to distract the user while the malicious chain proceeds. The malware can execute command-line arguments on the compromised host, including obfuscated commands, and has been observed abusing native Windows utilities such as certutil to download, decode, and execute follow-on content. Reported follow-on payloads include SYSCON and later OceanSalt, indicating its role as a flexible loader/dropper in multi-stage espionage operations.
The malware also includes cleanup behavior, including the ability to delete downloaded files from an infected system, which supports defense evasion and artifact reduction after execution. Assessments of CARROTBAT characterize it as relatively unsophisticated in implementation, but effective in combining decoy delivery, command execution, rudimentary obfuscation, and living-off-the-land techniques to support targeted intrusion activity.
Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
1 distinct threat actor attributed by public researchers. Open in Mallory to see the full evidence chain and overlapping campaigns.
TA406 has used many different malware families, including KONNI, SANNY, CARROTBAT/CARROTBALL, BabyShark, Amadey and Android Moez.
14 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
The content repeatedly describes payloads, strings, configuration files, scripts, URLs, and binaries being obfuscated or encoded using Base64, XOR, RC4, AES, RSA, hex encoding, custom algorithms, and other methods across many malware families and threat actors.
"download a remote executable file named 0_31.doc, which in turn is placed... with the filename of AAA.exe"
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors deleting files, directories, droppers, logs, scripts, temporary files, exfiltrated archives, and uninstalling themselves to cover tracks or reduce forensic artifacts.
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."
70 indicators attributed across vendor reports, sandbox runs, and researcher write-ups. Full values are available in Mallory.
IPs, domains, and DNS infrastructure linked to this family.
File hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) from samples and reports.
Other indicator types observed in public reporting.
7 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Downloader malware that can delete downloaded files from compromised hosts.
Customized dropper/loader that writes and opens an embedded decoy document (multiple supported formats) and then executes an obfuscated command (often via Windows certutil) to download and run a second-stage payload; observed delivering SYSCON and later OceanSalt in the “Fractured Block” campaign.
Malware capable of executing obfuscated commands on infected systems.
Malware/tool that can execute command-line arguments on a compromised host.
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.