Carberp

Overview

Carberp is an elite, highly sophisticated banking trojan and modular cyber espionage framework first identified in 2010. Developed by a well-organized Russian-Ukrainian cybercrime syndicate, Carberp was engineered to steal financial credentials, intercept one-time passwords (OTP), and manipulate online banking portals across Russian and international financial institutions. Carberp was a pioneer in stealth and kernel evasion: it incorporated kernel-mode bootkits (including the Rovnix bootkit engine), injected into legitimate system processes without touching disk, and hooked browser socket and cryptographic APIs to perform dynamic man-in-the-browser (MitB) content injection. In March 2012, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) arrested eight key members of the Carberp syndicate in Moscow and Odessa. In June 2013, Carberp's complete C source code was leaked online, providing the foundational blueprints and code modules used in subsequent advanced threats including Anunak/Carbanak, Dyre, and Dridex.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• Carberp
• Trojan.Carberp
• Win32/Carberp
• Backdoor.Carberp

Threat Actor Attribution

Attribution is probabilistic, not a science. Each link below states its confidence level and the evidence behind it.

• Russian-Ukrainian Carberp Syndicate / March 2012 FSB & MVD Moscow Arrests High confidence
  Basis: In March 2012, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) apprehended eight primary members of the Carberp banking trojan gang in Moscow and Odessa who stole tens of millions of dollars from financial institutions. [source]

Family Pedigree & Lineage

Malware authors regularly fork and iterate upon existing codebases. Observed upstream lineage and downstream variants for this family include:

Derived From / Upstream Ancestry: Rovnix Bootkit Core

Known Derivatives & Downstream Variants: Carberp V1.0 · Carberp Bootkit Edition · Carberp Leaked Source (June 2013) · Anunak / Carbanak Derivative

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

Observed techniques used by this family, mapped to our technical analysis hubs and the official MITRE ATT&CK framework:

Tactical Mitigations

Based on the techniques used by this family, consider the following defensive strategies:

• T1071.001: Implement web filtering and SSL/TLS inspection to detect malicious command and control (C2) traffic hiding in HTTP/HTTPS.
• T1185: Enforce strong MFA and use browser isolation or hardened browsers for sensitive financial or administrative portals to defeat session hijacking.

MITRE D3FEND™ Defensive Countermeasures

Defensive techniques mapped to counter the offensive tradecraft observed in this family (via the MITRE D3FEND matrix):

Exploited Vulnerabilities (CVEs)

This malware family is documented weaponizing the following common vulnerabilities and exposures:

• CVE-2010-0805 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).
• CVE-2010-2568 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).
• CVE-2011-3402 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).

Command & Control (C2) and Network Profile

How this family talks to its operators. C2 traffic can often identify a family even when its code and configuration are hard to analyse. Ports and patterns are historical and change between campaigns, so use them as hunting leads rather than block-only rules.

Indicators of Compromise

Public indicators drawn from CISA advisories and vendor reporting. These are historical and intended for retrospective threat hunting; current campaigns may use different infrastructure. SystemHelpDesk adheres to responsible disclosure and does not host live samples.

File hashes (SHA-256, sample)

Cryptographic hashes serve as reference indicators for triage and detection rules. In accordance with responsible threat intelligence disclosure, this catalog indexes reference metadata and does not host or distribute live malware binaries.

• 0f62d1c9ad9a64797a731efc1b4cfb0cc5a1b5d12de1d668749a46995642456e
• 294ac5e533c37560d2b8feeb492f58cfcb6c3c6efec24bb93b22cfd8ccb05612

Delivery vectors

• Drive-by download attacks utilizing exploit kits weaponized with zero-day font exploits (CVE-2011-3402)
• Spear-phishing emails containing malicious PDF or Word documents

Persistence mechanisms

• Master Boot Record (MBR) and VBR bootkit modification to survive operating system reinstalls
• Process injection into svchost.exe and explorer.exe

Tiered Detection Rules (Cisco CAIRN Model)

Modern threat detection requires multi-layered rule engineering. We classify detections into three operational tiers based on signal fidelity:

rule MALWARE_WIN_CARBERP_T1_ARTIFACT {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 1 Primitive Artifact: Raw string matches for Carberp"
        tier = "T1 - Primitive Artifact"
        confidence = "Low-Medium (Fast Triage)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        $s1 = "carberp" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "carberp" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "trojan.carberp" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "win32/carberp" ascii wide nocase
        $s5 = "backdoor.carberp" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

title: SystemHelpDesk Detection - Carberp (Banking Trojan) Execution & Triage
id: 500cabb8-59f5-5233-9143-f22dca251fb8
status: production
description: Detects execution, defense evasion, and persistence behaviors associated
  with the Carberp malware family. Detects recon staging, certutil file payload staging,
  and web-inject process proxying characteristic of banking trojan initial loaders.
references:
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/families/carberp
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/defensive/banking-trojan-protection
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/
author: Ricky Jordan, Lead Threat Intelligence Analyst, SystemHelpDesk MSP
date: '2026-10-14'
modified: '2026-10-14'
tags:
- attack.banking-trojan
- author.ricky-jordan
- source.systemhelpdesk-mfc
- attack.t1542_003
- attack.t1055
- attack.t1056_001
- attack.t1113
- attack.t1071_001
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection_process:
    Image|endswith:
    - \svchost.exe
    - \explorer.exe
    - \msiexec.exe
    - \certutil.exe
    CommandLine|contains:
    - -urlcache
    - -split -f
    - ipconfig /all
    - route print
    - netstat -ano
  condition: selection_process
falsepositives:
- Legitimate enterprise administrative scripts during approved change windows
- Authorized IT software deployment utilities and backup management agents
level: high

rule MALWARE_WIN_CARBERP_T3_ATTRIBUTION {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 3 Attribution Fingerprint: Heuristic detection for Carberp tradecraft"
        tier = "T3 - Attribution Fingerprint"
        confidence = "High (Confirmed Family Signature)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        // Core family identifier & heuristic payload signatures
        $attrib_str = "carberp" ascii wide nocase
        $pe_magic = "MZ" ascii
        $net_marker = "http" ascii nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and ($attrib_str and $net_marker) and filesize < 15MB
}

Containment & Response Steps

Ordered checklist for responders. Adapt to your environment and engage professional support for active incidents.

1. Instantly isolate the endpoint from the network to halt the active Man-in-the-Browser interception and prevent further financial data exfiltration.
2. Do NOT reboot the machine immediately; capture a forensic memory image to extract the active Carberp configuration and web injects from RAM.
3. Assume all financial portals accessed from the machine are compromised; initiate mandatory password resets and contact relevant banking institutions.
4. Due to the bootkit capabilities, formatting the hard drive and rebuilding the OS is the only guaranteed method of eradication.

What to Avoid

Common mistakes during response to this family that can destroy evidence, spread the infection, or worsen recovery.

1. Do not trust any web session initiated from the infected machine; Carberp actively alters the HTML presented to the user.
2. Avoid relying solely on basic AV removal tools; they frequently fail to eradicate the underlying bootkit persistence mechanism.

References & External Analysis

• Reuters - Russian Police Arrest 8 Suspected Carberp Hackers
• MITRE ATT&CK - Carberp
• CERT-UA - Carberp Banking Threat Analysis
• Search "carberp" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
• Search "carberp" on Any.Run (Sandbox Sandbox)
• Search "carberp" on MalwareBazaar (Malware Samples)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Threats (Category: Banking Trojan)

Explore other documented threats in the same operational category:

• Guildma
• Banbra
• Trickster
• Zusy
• Alien
• Tinba
• Gozi
• Bestafera

Machine-readable

Get this profile as JSON: https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/api/carberp.json

Ecosystem & Interactive Environments

This profile is part of the Malware Families Catalog, a public dataset of 2,899 malware families. The catalog is also published across our ecosystem: Hugging Face, Kaggle, Zenodo, Replit, StackBlitz, CodeSandbox, and CodePen.