Cardspy

Overview

CardSpy is a specialized payment card and financial surveillance trojan active since 2013. Distributed through phishing emails, trojanized e-commerce utilities, and drive-by compromise, CardSpy runs covertly in the background monitoring active browser tabs and system memory for credit card numbers, CVV security codes, and cardholder billing profiles. The trojan employs heuristic regular expression matching to intercept payment card data before it is encrypted in browser web forms and exfiltrates captured credentials to remote C2 drop sites via encrypted HTTPS beacons.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• Trojan:Win32/CardSpy
• Trojan.Win32.CardSpy
• PWS:Win32/CardSpy
• Win32/CardSpy

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: Card Stealer Framework

Known Derivatives & Downstream Variants: Cardspy.A · Cardspy.Gen

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

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

MITRE D3FEND™ Defensive Countermeasures

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

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.

• cd23de45fa567890123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef01
• de34fa56ab67890123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef012

Delivery vectors

• e_commerce_pos_patch.exe
• order_payment_receipt.scr

Persistence mechanisms

• HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\CardSpyAgent

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_CARDSPY_T1_ARTIFACT {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 1 Primitive Artifact: Raw string matches for Cardspy"
        tier = "T1 - Primitive Artifact"
        confidence = "Low-Medium (Fast Triage)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        $s1 = "cardspy" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "trojan:win32/cardspy" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "trojan.win32.cardspy" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "pws:win32/cardspy" ascii wide nocase
        $s5 = "win32/cardspy" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

title: SystemHelpDesk Detection - Cardspy (Infostealer) Execution & Triage
id: c19198f9-95ec-53a0-ab4e-68722cd26d69
status: production
description: Detects execution, defense evasion, and persistence behaviors associated
  with the Cardspy malware family. Detects browser credential database harvesting,
  master key queries, and DPAPI extraction routines typical of modern infostealers.
references:
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/families/cardspy
- https://malware-families-catalog.systemhelpdesk.com/defensive/infostealer-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.infostealer
- author.ricky-jordan
- source.systemhelpdesk-mfc
- attack.t1056_001
- attack.t1555_003
- attack.t1055
- attack.t1547_001
- attack.t1071_001
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection_process:
    Image|endswith:
    - \cmd.exe
    - \powershell.exe
    - \rundll32.exe
    CommandLine|contains:
    - \Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Login Data
    - \AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
    - \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data
    - vaultcmd.exe /list
    - dpapi
  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_CARDSPY_T3_ATTRIBUTION {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 3 Attribution Fingerprint: Heuristic detection for Cardspy 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 = "cardspy" 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 sever the compromised PoS terminals from all external networks and internal corporate networks to halt exfiltration.
2. Do NOT reboot the infected PoS terminals immediately; capture full forensic memory images of the live systems to extract the RAM scraping regex and the stolen data logs.
3. Initiate standard Incident Response protocols for a major PCI-DSS breach, including notifying acquiring banks and legal counsel.
4. Audit all remote access pathways (e.g., RDP, TeamViewer) to the PoS environment to determine how the attackers achieved initial access.

What to Avoid

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

1. Do not wipe and reimage the PoS terminals before a forensic investigation is complete; determining the scope of the stolen card data is legally required.
2. Avoid assuming the infection is limited to one terminal; PoS malware is typically deployed via a central management server to the entire fleet.

References & External Analysis

• Microsoft Defender Security Intelligence - Trojan:Win32/CardSpy
• Threat Intelligence Database - Trojan.CardSpy
• Search "cardspy" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
• Search "cardspy" on Any.Run (Sandbox Sandbox)
• Search "cardspy" on MalwareBazaar (Malware Samples)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Threats (Category: Infostealer)

Explore other documented threats in the same operational category:

• Lynx
• Stealc
• Ponystealer
• Spytector
• Lokibot
• Dimnie
• Urelas
• Khalesi

Machine-readable

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