{ "family": "cridex", "sample_count": 1, "category": "trojan", "description": "

Executive Summary

\nCridex is a highly influential banking trojan and worm that emerged in 2011, notorious for being the direct predecessor to the devastating Dridex botnet. Designed for aggressive financial theft, Cridex infected systems to harvest banking credentials, intercept secure web sessions, and rapidly propagate across local networks and removable media, causing massive financial losses in the early 2010s.\n\n

Infection Vector and Technical Capabilities

\nCridex utilized a multi-pronged distribution strategy, primarily leveraging massive spam campaigns containing malicious attachments (often ZIP files containing executable droppers) and drive-by downloads via the Blackhole Exploit Kit.\n\nOnce active, Cridex combined the espionage capabilities of a banking trojan with the spread of a worm:\n\n\n

Threat Assessment

\nA Cridex infection represents a critical security incident resulting in immediate financial risk. The theft of banking credentials combined with the worm's ability to rapidly infect an entire corporate network makes it a highly destructive threat that requires immediate containment.\n\n

Remediation and Eradication

\n", "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.", "aliases": [ "Worm.Cridex", "Trojan.Cridex", "W32/Cridex" ], "enrichment_level": "expert-seo", "faq": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is Cridex and what threat category does it belong to?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Cridex is classified as a Trojan. Documented across security telemetry, it is engineered to execute unauthorized operations, establish persistent footholds on target endpoints, and facilitate malicious campaigns targeting enterprise and individual environments." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How does Cridex establish persistence and evade defensive controls?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Cridex typically establishes persistence through registry run keys, scheduled tasks, or service installations, while evading signature-based antivirus solutions through code obfuscation, memory injection, or anti-analysis sandbox checks." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What are the essential incident response steps for mitigating a Cridex compromise?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Security teams responding to Cridex should immediately isolate affected endpoints from the network, perform memory triage to capture volatile forensic artifacts, audit registry and startup persistence mechanisms, revoke exposed user credentials, and restore systems from verified, clean backups." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What secondary payloads and staging behaviors are commonly associated with Worm.Cridex?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Worm.Cridex frequently operates as a loader or dropper designed to establish a foothold before downloading and executing secondary high-impact malware payloads. Depending on the threat actor's objectives, these dropped modules can range from ransomware and banking injects to modular infostealers and remote management backdoors." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How can security operations teams effectively detect and hunt for Worm.Cridex across enterprise endpoints?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Defenders should hunt for Worm.Cridex by deploying behavioral endpoint detection and response (EDR) rules that monitor suspicious process spawning (such as cmd.exe or powershell.exe spawned from office documents or temporary directories), anomalous outbound network connections from non-browser binaries, and unauthorized modifications to Windows Run keys and scheduled task registries." } } ], "faq_count": 5, "mitre_attack": [ "T1056.004", "T1091", "T1185", "T1566.001" ], "cisa_advisory": null, "last_updated": "2026-10-15", "type": "Banking Trojan / Worm", "target_industries": [ "Global / Opportunistic" ], "motivation": "Opportunistic", "threat_actors": [ "Unknown / Cybercriminal" ], "target_geographies": [ "Global" ], "attack_stage": [ "execution", "persistence" ], "ecosystem": [ "windows_pe" ], "is_emerging": false, "mitre_attack_detail": [ { "id": "T1056.004", "name": "Input Capture: Credential API Hooking", "tactic": "Credential Access" }, { "id": "T1091", "name": "Replication Through Removable Media (The core propagation mechanism using autorun.inf)", "tactic": "Lateral Movement" }, { "id": "T1185", "name": "Browser Session Hijacking (Ad injection and tracking)", "tactic": "Collection" }, { "id": "T1566.001", "name": "Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment", "tactic": "Initial Access" } ], "containment_steps": [ "Sever network connectivity for the flagged endpoint to terminate persistent command-and-control (C2) communication channels and stop Cridex from retrieving secondary stage payloads.", "Capture process memory triage to detect and terminate malicious threads injected by Cridex into legitimate system processes such as explorer.exe or svchost.exe.", "Audit Windows Registry Run keys (HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run) and Task Scheduler entries to locate and purge Cridex persistence hooks.", "Deploy updated enterprise EDR detection signatures and conduct an out-of-band endpoint scan to isolate dropped binaries and staged payloads.", "Rotate all credentials, domain user passwords, and session cookies active on the system during the Cridex execution timeframe." ], "what_to_avoid": [ "Do not assume the incident is resolved simply because an antivirus tool removed the initial Cridex dropper; always verify that secondary payloads and persistence hooks have been eradicated.", "Avoid logging in with Domain Admin or privileged credentials on a machine suspected of running Cridex until memory triage is complete.", "Do not delay host isolation; automated lateral movement and credential dumping can occur within minutes of initial execution." ], "target_platforms": [ "Windows 11", "Windows 10", "Windows 7" ] }