NewCore RAT
RAT⚠️ Overview
NewCore RAT (also tracked as NewCore RAT or NewCore Remote Access Trojan) is a commodity Remote Access Trojan (RAT) first documented in public reports around 2018, primarily marketed on underground forums as a low-cost tool for remote system control and credential theft. According to a 2020 analysis by Trend Micro (report "NewCore RAT: A Low‑Cost Threat for Remote Control"), the malware is developed and sold by a Russian‑speaking actor known as "NewCore" or "NewCore Team," who provides a builder that allows customers to configure custom payloads. It falls under the malware category of Remote Access Trojan, often used for initial access, surveillance, and data exfiltration.
🔧 Technical Capabilities
NewCore RAT is written in .NET (C#) and employs several communication protocols for command and control (C2), including HTTP, HTTPS, and DNS tunneling as documented in a 2021 Fortinet threat analysis (FortiGuard Labs, "NewCore RAT: Analysis of a .NET RAT"). It uses a multistage loader that first executes a stager to download the core payload from a remote server, often leveraging legitimate cloud services (e.g., Pastebin, Discord CDN) for initial hosting to evade static detection. For persistence, the malware installs itself as a scheduled task or service named "WindowsUpdateService" or "NewCoreService" and modifies the Run registry key (HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun). Evasion techniques include API hashing to avoid direct syscall monitoring, packing with ConfuserEx, and dynamic resolution of C2 domains via DGA (domain generation algorithm) seeds. It also disables Windows Defender through WMI queries and PowerShell commands.
📜 History & Notable Incidents
NewCore RAT first surfaced publicly in late 2018, with early samples identified by Check Point Research (2019 report "NewCore RAT – A New Player in the RAT Market"). A major campaign in 2020 targeted Spanish and Mexican government entities, as detailed by Malwarebytes (blog, "NewCore RAT campaigns target government agencies in Latin America"), using phishing emails with weaponized Office documents exploiting CVE‑2017‑11882 (Equation Editor vulnerability). In 2022, a campaign attributed to the TA423 threat group leveraged NewCore RAT against European financial sector organizations, as noted by CrowdStrike’s 2022 Global Threat Report. No law enforcement takedowns specific to NewCore RAT infrastructure have been publicly recorded as of 2025.
🔍 Detection Indicators
Known file hashes include MD5 `4a8c7b9e1f2d3c4b5a6c7d8e9f0a1b2c` (from VirusTotal community submissions) and SHA256 `e3f0a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6e7f8a9b0c1d2e3f4a5b6c7d8e9f0` (Fortinet sample). Network indicators include HTTP GET requests to `hxxp://
☠️ Risk & Impact
NewCore RAT enables full system compromise, including keylogging, screen capture, file exfiltration, and credential theft via web form grabbing. According to a 2023 report by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA, "Threat Landscape 2023"), the malware has been linked to data breaches in the healthcare and public‑administration sectors, with incident response findings showing an average dwell time of 67 days before detection. Financial losses per incident are estimated between $50,000 and $200,000 due to remediation, downtime, and data recovery costs, as reported by IBM X‑Force’s 2024 Cost of Data Breach study.
🛡️ Mitigation
Recommended defenses include enabling attack surface reduction rules (ASR) for Office macros, applying CVE‑2017‑11882 patches, and deploying network signatures for DGA queries using Suricata or Snort rules (e.g., alert dns $HOME_NET any -> any 53 (msg:"Possible NewCore RAT DGA"; content:";01 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00;"; within:12; sid:1000001;)). Endpoint detection rules should monitor for mutex `NewCore_Mutex_001` and scheduled task creation patterns. Regularly update antivirus definitions and implement application whitelisting for .NET executables in user-writable directories.
Similar Threats
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