FortigateSniffer
Hunt this family in your stack
Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
Techniques & procedures
10 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
Initial Access
2 techniques
Initial Access
Persistence
2 techniques
Persistence
Privilege Escalation
1 technique
Privilege Escalation
Stealth
2 techniques
Stealth
Credential Access
6 techniques
Credential Access
Rather than deploying malware, the tool abuses FortiOS’s own built-in diagnostic command diagnose sniffer packet to passively intercept all authentication traffic traversing a compromised firewall across 24 protocols, including RADIUS, NTLM, Kerberos, LDAP, RDP, SMB, MSSQL, FTP, Telnet, and WinRM.
The company says the threat actor deployed a credential-harvesting sniffer framework called "FortigateSniffer" on compromised FortiGate devices after first gaining administrative access via credential stuffing and brute-force attacks.
The researchers say the threat actor behind this campaign serves as an initial access broker (IAB), using credential stuffing, brute-force attacks, credential harvesting, and offline password cracking to obtain access to corporate networks.
Once sniffed, the raw SSH terminal output is converted into .pcapng format by the SNIFTRAN engine, then processed through a PCAP Deep Analysis Toolkit (v5.0) that extracts cleartext credentials, NTLMv2 hashes, Kerberos TGS/ASREP tickets, and session cookies.
Discovery
1 technique
Discovery
Rather than deploying malware, the tool abuses FortiOS’s own built-in diagnostic command diagnose sniffer packet to passively intercept all authentication traffic traversing a compromised firewall across 24 protocols, including RADIUS, NTLM, Kerberos, LDAP, RDP, SMB, MSSQL, FTP, Telnet, and WinRM.
IOCs tracked for this family
8 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.
Recent activity
2 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A custom Golang-based credential-harvesting tool used against FortiGate firewalls. It passively captures authentication traffic via FortiOS diagnostic sniffing, converts output to PCAPNG, and extracts cleartext credentials, NTLMv2 hashes, Kerberos tickets, and session cookies. It also uses GeoIP filtering and business-hour scheduling for evasion.
A Golang-based credential-harvesting sniffer deployed on compromised FortiGate devices. It abuses the legitimate FortiOS diagnose sniffer packet feature to capture authentication traffic and steal credentials, password hashes, Kerberos tickets, NTLM material, and other authentication secrets from multiple protocols.
The version that knows your environment.
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.