Goznym

Overview

Trojan:Win32/Goznym is a devastating hybrid banking trojan created in early 2016 through the engineering merger of two notorious malware codebases: the Nymaim stealth dropper and the Gozi (ISFB) banking trojan core. Goznym combined Nymaim's sophisticated two-stage anti-analysis loader with Gozi's Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) webinject capabilities to steal online banking credentials from corporate bank accounts across the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Bulgaria. The syndicate successfully siphoned over $100 million from small businesses, municipal governments, and financial institutions by redirecting victims' online banking sessions to fraudulent replica portals. Goznym operators leveraged the bulletproof hosting infrastructure of the Avalanche criminal network. In May 2019, the United States Department of Justice, in coordination with Europol, Eurojust, and law enforcement agencies across Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Germany, unsealed landmark criminal indictments in the Western District of Pennsylvania against ten members of the Goznym criminal organization, leading to the arrest and prosecution of key figures including leader Alexander Konovolov.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• GozNym
• Win32/Goznym
• Trojan-Banker.GozNym
• GozNym Hybrid

Threat Actor Attribution

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

• Alexander Konovolov (GozNym Leader) High confidence
  Basis:
• Avalanche Bulletproof Cybercrime Syndicate High confidence
  Basis:

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: Nymaim · Gozi

Known Derivatives & Downstream Variants: Goznym V1.0 · Goznym Redirector Module · Goznym Wire Transfer Engine

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:

• T1056.001: Implement Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to monitor for suspicious API calls related to keystroke interception. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to render stolen passwords useless.
• 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.
• T1566.001: Scan email attachments for malicious macros, scripts, or suspicious archive files.

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-2015-1641 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).
• CVE-2015-5119 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).
• CVE-2017-0199 — 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.

• 4c3b2a1987654321fedcba0987654321abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789
• 7a8b9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d7e8f90123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456

Delivery vectors

• spearphishing_attachments
• exploit_kits
• avalanche_network

Persistence mechanisms

• HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• Scheduled Tasks

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_GOZNYM_T1_ARTIFACT {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 1 Primitive Artifact: Raw string matches for Goznym"
        tier = "T1 - Primitive Artifact"
        confidence = "Low-Medium (Fast Triage)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        $s1 = "goznym" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "goznym" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "win32/goznym" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "trojan-banker.goznym" ascii wide nocase
        $s5 = "goznym hybrid" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

title: SystemHelpDesk Detection - Goznym (Banking Trojan) Execution & Triage
id: a5047987-c005-5a71-aaa9-c2f02342bdb4
status: production
description: Detects execution, defense evasion, and persistence behaviors associated
  with the Goznym 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/goznym
- 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.t1185
- attack.t1055
- attack.t1555_003
- attack.t1071_001
- attack.t1566_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_GOZNYM_T3_ATTRIBUTION {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 3 Attribution Fingerprint: Heuristic detection for Goznym 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 = "goznym" 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. Terminate injected browser sessions and isolate financial workstations from corporate LAN segments.
2. Contact financial institutions to halt pending wire transfers originating from impacted accounting hosts.
3. Enforce strict dual-authorization controls for corporate automated clearing house (ACH) and wire transfers.
4. Apply security patches for Microsoft Office memory corruption vulnerability CVE-2015-1641.

What to Avoid

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

1. Do not allow single-user approval on corporate wire transactions exceeding designated thresholds.
2. Avoid opening unverified email attachments claiming to contain wire payment details.
3. Never bypass corporate browser integrity checks or certificate warnings.

References & External Analysis

• US Department of Justice: GozNym Cybercrime Syndicate Indictment Unsealed
• Europol Press Release: GozNym Banking Trojan Syndicate Dismantled
• NIST National Vulnerability Database CVE-2015-1641
• Search "goznym" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
• Search "goznym" on Any.Run (Sandbox Sandbox)
• Search "goznym" on MalwareBazaar (Malware Samples)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Threats (Category: Banking Trojan)

Explore other documented threats in the same operational category:

• Alien
• Icedid
• Guildma
• A_311_Death
• Banbra
• Tinynuke
• Tinba
• Zbot

Machine-readable

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