{
  "family": "woool",
  "sample_count": 3,
  "category": "trojan",
  "description": "Trojan:Win32/Woool (often associated with variants targeting 'Legend of Mir' or 'World of Warcraft') is a highly specialized Password Stealer / Keylogger designed explicitly to target players of online MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). The objective is to steal account credentials, in-game currency, and high-value virtual items, which the attackers then sell on grey-market forums for real-world fiat currency.<br><br><b>Understanding Woool (Gaming Credential Stealer)</b><br>To an end-user, the infection may cause slight system sluggishness or unexpected game crashes, culminating in a hijacked gaming account. For a security analyst, while this malware targets consumers, its presence on a corporate network indicates a severe violation of acceptable use policies and represents a massive endpoint security failure, as the same keylogging techniques (`T1056.001`) that steal a WoW password will easily capture corporate VPN credentials.<br><br><b>Execution and Theft Mechanics</b><br>Woool is frequently distributed via malicious 'game cheat' forums, fake game patches, or bundled with pirated gaming software (`T1189`). Upon execution, it establishes persistence via the registry (`T1547.001`). The trojan operates by hooking into the Windows messaging subsystem or dropping a custom driver to monitor keystrokes globally. However, it often specifically targets the memory space (`T1003.001` - applied to game processes) of specific game executables (e.g., `wow.exe`) to scrape credentials and session tokens directly as the user logs in.<br><br><b>Indicators of Compromise & Impact</b><br>The impact is the total compromise of targeted gaming accounts and the potential capture of unrelated passwords if the user reuses credentials. Host-based IoCs include the presence of anomalous dropped files in the `%AppData%` or game installation directories, unexpected API hooking detected by EDR, and registry modifications. Network IoCs include outbound connections to known credential-drop servers, often hosted in regions with lax cybercrime enforcement.",
  "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.",
  "aliases": [],
  "enrichment_level": "expert-seo",
  "faq": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "What is Woool and what threat category does it belong to?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Woool 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 Woool establish persistence and evade defensive controls?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Woool 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 Woool compromise?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Security teams responding to Woool 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 Woool?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Woool 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 Woool across enterprise endpoints?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Defenders should hunt for Woool 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": [
    "T1056.001",
    "T1547.001",
    "T1003.001",
    "T1189"
  ],
  "cisa_advisory": null,
  "last_updated": "2026-06-09",
  "mitre_attack_detail": [
    {
      "id": "T1056.001",
      "name": "Input Capture: Keylogging",
      "tactic": "Credential Access"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1003.001",
      "name": "OS Credential Dumping (Targeting game memory space)",
      "tactic": "Credential Access"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1547.001",
      "name": "Boot or Logon Autostart Execution",
      "tactic": "Persistence"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1189",
      "name": "Drive-by Compromise (Fake cheats/patches)",
      "tactic": "Initial Access"
    }
  ],
  "containment_steps": [
    "Isolate the endpoint to prevent the exfiltration of captured keystroke logs to the attacker's C2 server.",
    "Advise the user to immediately change the passwords for their online gaming accounts, as well as any corporate or financial accounts where they reused the same password.",
    "Run a comprehensive anti-malware scan to identify and remove the trojan and its associated keylogging components.",
    "Enforce organizational policies restricting the downloading and execution of unapproved software, especially gaming-related applications."
  ],
  "what_to_avoid": [
    "Do not dismiss the alert simply because it targets a game; a keylogger is a critical threat regardless of its primary target.",
    "Avoid letting the user continue working on the machine until it is fully sanitized, as any typed data is compromised."
  ],
  "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 7"
  ]
}