{
  "family": "smominru",
  "sample_count": 1,
  "category": "advanced_threat",
  "description": "Worm:Win32/Smominru is one of the most prolific and resilient botnets in operation, primarily dedicated to large-scale cryptojacking (mining Monero). What sets Smominru apart from simple miners is its aggressive, self-propagating worm capabilities. It actively scans the internet and internal networks, heavily leveraging the EternalBlue (MS17-010) exploit to breach unpatched Windows servers and workstations, spreading laterally without any user interaction (`T1210`).<br><br><b>Understanding Smominru (EternalBlue Botnet)</b><br>To an end-user, an infected server will experience extreme CPU utilization, leading to severe performance degradation or total unresponsiveness. For a security architect, a Smominru outbreak is a massive red flag indicating a systemic failure in patch management and internal network segmentation, as the worm will rapidly compromise every unpatched machine it can reach.<br><br><b>Execution and Lateral Movement Mechanics</b><br>Smominru uses a multi-stage architecture. After exploiting EternalBlue (`T1210`) or brute-forcing MS-SQL/RDP (`T1110`), it drops a PowerShell payload or uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) (`T1047`) to execute commands filelessly. It downloads the XMRig mining software and a secondary credential stealer (often Mimikatz) to harvest passwords for further lateral movement (`T1003.001`). Persistence is established via robust WMI event subscriptions (`T1546.003`), making it notoriously difficult to eradicate, as the WMI triggers will re-download the malware even if the binaries are deleted. The botnet uses a highly decentralized C2 infrastructure, often hiding behind proxies and DGA domains.<br><br><b>Indicators of Compromise & Impact</b><br>The impact is a massive drain on corporate computing resources and the exposure of internal credentials. Host-based IoCs include EDR alerts for anomalous WMI activity (e.g., `scrcons.exe` consuming high CPU), the execution of known mining binaries (`xmrig.exe`), and unexpected PowerShell scripts running as SYSTEM. Network IoCs include a massive volume of outbound SMB traffic (TCP 445) as the infected host scans for other vulnerable machines, and persistent Stratum protocol connections to mining pools.",
  "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.",
  "aliases": [],
  "enrichment_level": "expert-seo",
  "faq": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "What is Smominru and what threat category does it belong to?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Smominru is classified as a Advanced Threat. 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 Smominru establish persistence and evade defensive controls?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Smominru 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 Smominru compromise?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Security teams responding to Smominru 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 lateral movement and credential access tactics does Smominru leverage in enterprise intrusions?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Smominru frequently utilizes privileged account harvesting techniques such as LSASS memory dumping, Kerberoasting, and token impersonation to escalate privileges. Once administrative credentials are acquired, it pivots across the victim network utilizing living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) such as WMI, PowerShell remoting, and PsExec, or abuses remote desktop protocols (RDP) to reach critical internal repositories and domain controllers."
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "How does Smominru maintain covert communications and evade perimeter network monitoring?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Smominru often relies on multi-stage command and control (C2) architectures utilizing encrypted protocols over standard web ports (HTTPS/443 or DNS tunneling) to blend in with legitimate enterprise network traffic. Many variants incorporate proxy networks, domain fronting, or cloud services (such as Microsoft Graph API, Google Drive, or Telegram) to masquerade C2 channels, bypassing traditional signature-based egress filtering."
      }
    }
  ],
  "faq_count": 5,
  "mitre_attack": [
    "T1546.003",
    "T1210",
    "T1496",
    "T1047"
  ],
  "cisa_advisory": null,
  "last_updated": "2026-06-09",
  "mitre_attack_detail": [
    {
      "id": "T1210",
      "name": "Exploitation of Remote Services (Using EternalBlue MS17-010 for lateral movement)",
      "tactic": "Lateral Movement"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1546.003",
      "name": "Event Triggered Execution: Windows Management Instrumentation Event Subscription (Primary persistence mechanism)",
      "tactic": "Persistence"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1496",
      "name": "Resource Hijacking (Mining Monero using stolen CPU resources)",
      "tactic": "Impact"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1047",
      "name": "Windows Management Instrumentation (Used for fileless execution and lateral movement)",
      "tactic": "Execution"
    }
  ],
  "containment_steps": [
    "Isolate infected machines from the network immediately to halt the aggressive SMB scanning and lateral movement.",
    "Prioritize patching all Windows systems against MS17-010 (EternalBlue) across the entire enterprise.",
    "Use specialized tools (like Sysinternals Autoruns) to identify and delete the malicious WMI event consumers and filters used for persistence.",
    "Segment the network to restrict SMB traffic (TCP 445) from flowing freely between workstations."
  ],
  "what_to_avoid": [
    "Do not assume deleting the mining executable fixes the problem; the WMI persistence will reinstall it within minutes.",
    "Avoid leaving MS-SQL servers exposed to the internet with weak or default SA passwords, as this is a common secondary ingress vector."
  ],
  "target_industries": [
    "Global / Opportunistic"
  ],
  "motivation": "Opportunistic",
  "threat_actors": [
    "Unknown / Cybercriminal"
  ],
  "target_geographies": [
    "Global"
  ],
  "attack_stage": [
    "execution",
    "persistence"
  ],
  "ecosystem": [
    "windows_pe"
  ],
  "is_emerging": false,
  "target_platforms": [
    "Windows 11",
    "Windows 10",
    "Windows Server 2022",
    "Windows Server 2019"
  ]
}