NOKKI is a Windows malware family associated with North Korean cyber activity and noted to share significant code overlap with KONNI. It has been observed collecting basic host profiling data including the victim username, local timestamp, and IP address, and staging collected information locally prior to onward handling. The malware employs a custom de-obfuscation routine during execution, uses masquerading to appear as a legitimate Microsoft update component, and has used rundll32 for execution to blend with normal Windows activity. Persistence has been established through Registry Run autostart entries, and the malware has been observed deleting files to reduce forensic visibility and cover tracks. The documented behavior is consistent with a lightweight espionage-oriented implant focused on host reconnaissance, stealthy execution, local data staging, and anti-forensic cleanup on compromised Windows systems.
Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
16 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors establishing persistence by adding values under Registry Run keys such as HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and by placing shortcuts or files in Startup folders.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors establishing persistence by adding values under Registry Run keys such as HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and by placing shortcuts or files in Startup folders.
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors using obfuscated code, encrypted strings, Base64/XOR/RC4/AES encoding, VMProtect/ConfuserEx/SmartAssembly, stack strings, control-flow flattening, opaque predicates, and hidden payloads to evade analysis and detection.
actors used the following command to rename one of their tools to a benign file name: ren "%temp%\upload" audiodg.exe ... APT1 ... used ... AcroRD32.exe ... as a name for malware ... APT28 ... changed extensions on files containing exfiltrated data to make them appear benign ... APT32 has renamed a NetCat binary to kb-10233.exe to masquerade as a Windows update.
Akira has used legitimate names and locations for files to evade defenses.
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.
APT28 macro uses the command certutil -decode to decode contents of a .txt file storing the base64 encoded payload.
Adversaries may abuse rundll32.exe to proxy execution of malicious code. Using rundll32.exe, vice executing directly (i.e. Shared Modules), may avoid triggering security tools that may not monitor execution of the rundll32.exe process because of allowlists or false positives from normal operations.
AdFind can extract subnet information from Active Directory; actors used ipconfig /all after exploiting a machine; numerous malware and groups used ipconfig, ifconfig, arp, route, netsh, nbtstat, NBTscan, and related APIs to gather IP, MAC, DNS, DHCP, gateway, proxy, domain, ARP cache, routing, and adapter details.
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 OS version, computer name, architecture, CPU, memory, disk, language, and other host details; examples include use of commands such as ver, systeminfo, hostname, uname -m, sw_vers -productVersion, and fsutil.
Examples include: "Babuk can enumerate disk volumes," "Confucius has used a file stealer that can examine system drives," and "XAgentOSX contains the getInstalledAPP function to run ls -la /Applications to gather what applications are installed."
The content repeatedly describes malware and threat actors collecting the current date, time, or time zone from victim systems, including examples such as "The net time command can be used... to determine the local or remote system time" and commands like "net time \\hostname" and "w32tm /tz".
6 indicators 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.
31 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
... NOKKI ... (v1.1→v1.2) ...
NOKKI (v1.1→v1.2)
Mentioned as malware that has employed keylogging techniques.
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.