Raccoon

Overview

Raccoon Stealer (also tracked as RecordBreaker, Trojan:Win32/Raccoon, and Race Stealer) is a premier commercial information stealer written in C/C++ that emerged on Russian-language underground cybercrime forums in April 2019. Marketed under an aggressive Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) rental model for $200 per month, Raccoon quickly became one of the top three most prevalent information stealers in the world alongside RedLine and Vidar. Raccoon was engineered for rapid, multi-threaded credential harvesting: it sweeps across infected Windows endpoints, targeting stored passwords, autofill form entries, credit card vaults, and session cookies from over 60 Chromium and Gecko-based browsers. It comprehensively targets cryptocurrency assets, extracting desktop wallet files (Bitcoin-Core, Electrum, Exodus, Atomic) and over 40 browser Web3 wallet extensions (including MetaMask, Phantom, and TronLink), alongside session tokens from Discord, Telegram, and Steam. In mid-2022, following a brief operational pause due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the developers launched 'Raccoon Stealer v2' (RecordBreaker), entirely re-written in native C with a tiny 50KB footprint, faster string searching, and encrypted C2 communications using RC4 and base64. In October 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against primary administrator Mark Sokolovsky following his arrest in the Netherlands, accompanied by an international takedown of Raccoon's C2 infrastructure and CISA Advisory AA22-297A.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• Raccoon Stealer
• RecordBreaker
• Trojan:Win32/Raccoon
• Win32/RaccoonStealer
• Race Stealer

Family Pedigree & Lineage

Malware authors regularly fork and iterate upon existing codebases. Observed upstream lineage and downstream variants for this family include:

Known Derivatives & Downstream Variants: Raccoon_V1 · Raccoon_V2_Recordbreaker

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

This family has been observed using the following ATT&CK techniques: T1555.003 · T1539 · T1005 · T1082 · T1083 · T1071.001 · T1041 · T1027

Tactical Mitigations

Based on the techniques used by this family, consider the following defensive strategies:

• T1071.001: Implement web filtering and SSL/TLS inspection to detect malicious command and control (C2) traffic hiding in HTTP/HTTPS.

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-2023-38831 — In-depth exploitation analysis and catalog intelligence (NIST NVD ↗).

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.

• 098b671a52028ddc87c14a22ad31737be70d8a571025b508f72a4209bf270b8a
• 671a52028ddc87c14a22ad31737be70d8a571025b508f72a4209bf270b8a098b

Delivery vectors

• Search engine malvertising delivering malicious software installers (Notepad++, Blender, Tor Browser)
• YouTube videos promoting cracked games, software keys, and cryptocurrency mining bots
• Weaponized archives exploiting WinRAR vulnerability CVE-2023-38831

Persistence mechanisms

• Single-run execution model: executes in %TEMP%, harvests credentials, exfiltrates, and deletes itself
• Scheduled tasks created under randomized names for extended persistence in specific affiliate campaigns
• Temporary dropping of sqlite3.dll and nss3.dll support libraries into %PROGRAMDATA%

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_RACCOON_T1_ARTIFACT {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 1 Primitive Artifact: Raw string matches for Raccoon"
        tier = "T1 - Primitive Artifact"
        confidence = "Low-Medium (Fast Triage)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Threat Research Desk"
        date = "2026-10-14"
    strings:
        $s1 = "raccoon" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "raccoon stealer" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "recordbreaker" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "trojan:win32/raccoon" ascii wide nocase
        $s5 = "win32/raccoonstealer" ascii wide nocase
        $s6 = "race stealer" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

title: SystemHelpDesk Detection - Raccoon (Infostealer) Execution & Triage
id: 279d88b1-eb26-5869-93b6-12ac5e497513
status: production
description: Detects execution, defense evasion, and persistence behaviors associated
  with the Raccoon 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/raccoon
- 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.t1555_003
- attack.t1539
- attack.t1005
- attack.t1082
- attack.t1083
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_RACCOON_T3_ATTRIBUTION {
    meta:
        description = "Tier 3 Attribution Fingerprint: Heuristic detection for Raccoon 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 = "raccoon" 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
}

References & External Analysis

• CISA Advisory AA22-297A: FBI Disruption of Raccoon Stealer
• U.S. Department of Justice: Raccoon Stealer Administrator Indicted
• Mandiant: Dissecting Raccoon Stealer v2 RecordBreaker
• CISA Advisory: AA22-297A
• Search "raccoon" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
• Search "raccoon" on Any.Run (Sandbox Sandbox)
• Search "raccoon" on MalwareBazaar (Malware Samples)

North American Authority Advisory (CISA / NIST)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published an official US federal advisory on this family, which can be mapped to NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) incident response controls: AA22-297A ↗

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Threats (Category: Infostealer)

Explore other documented threats in the same operational category:

• Coinstealer
• Steam
• Fareit
• Browserpwdstealer
• Msilperseus
• Papras
• Bypass
• Spytector

Machine-readable

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