# North Korean COPPERHEDGE RAT targets cryptocurrency exchanges

Published: 2025-07-17 · Severity: routine · Sectors: financial-services, technology
Canonical: https://vorant.io/reports/65127010-4c69-50bd-8a32-d62a4d3b7447/north-korean-copperhedge-rat-targets-cryptocurrency-exchanges

> CISA discloses six Manuscrypt malware variants used by North Korean HIDDEN COBRA to maintain persistent remote access on victim networks.

CISA, FBI, and DoD identified and analyzed six variants of COPPERHEDGE, a sophisticated remote access tool (RAT) malware family used by North Korean government-linked threat actors operating under the HIDDEN COBRA designation. The Manuscrypt family variants are full-featured RATs capable of executing arbitrary commands, performing system reconnaissance, and exfiltrating data. Targets include cryptocurrency exchanges and related financial entities. All six variants communicate via HTTP POST requests to command-and-control servers using various obfuscation and encryption schemes including RC4 and XOR encoding, with variants distinguished by beacon strings, cookie formats, and HTTP POST structure variations. The malware maintains persistence through proxy servers to evade detection. CISA provided file hashes, C2 domains, Snort detection rules, and detailed technical analysis of each variant to enable network defense and threat hunting.

## Mentioned in this report

- Threat actors: Lazarus Group
- Malware: COPPERHEDGE, Manuscrypt

## Detection guidance (public sample)

### Cmd.exe Chaining Multiple System Reconnaissance Commands

ATT&CK: T1082

cmd.exe run with systeminfo plus a second discovery command (tasklist, ipconfig, net view, drive or directory listing) in one command line, matching RAT-style host reconnaissance. Auto-generated starting point — validate and tune in your environment before deploying. IOC matches can false-positive on shared infrastructure and decay as adversary infrastructure rotates.

```yaml
title: Cmd.exe Chaining Multiple System Reconnaissance Commands
description: Detects cmd.exe /c command lines that chain systeminfo with further discovery
  commands (process, network, drive or directory listing). This is the pattern a RAT
  such as COPPERHEDGE uses when it runs operator-supplied commands for system, software
  and file discovery. Matches on the chained discovery behaviour, not on any campaign-specific
  file name.
tags:
- attack.discovery
- attack.t1082
- attack.t1083
- attack.t1518
- attack.t1059.003
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection_cmd:
    Image|endswith: \cmd.exe
    CommandLine|contains:
    - ' /c '
    - ' /k '
  selection_sysinfo:
    CommandLine|contains: systeminfo
  selection_other:
    CommandLine|contains:
    - tasklist
    - ipconfig
    - net view
    - wmic logicaldisk
    - wmic product
    - dir c:\
  condition: selection_cmd and selection_sysinfo and selection_other
falsepositives:
- Administrators or helpdesk scripts collecting diagnostics in a single cmd one-liner
- Inventory or support tooling that gathers host information via cmd.exe
level: medium
id: a1771f2c-2d2e-5485-bb52-021b7e4ba14f
status: experimental
author: Vorant
references:
- https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/analysis-reports/ar20-133a
```

Behavioural rules are generated from public reporting — validate in your environment before deploying.

2 more detections for this report are in the app: the rules that match its indicators, the Sigma rules already converted to Splunk SPL, to Elastic where their fields map onto Elastic's integrations and to Microsoft Defender XDR KQL wherever Defender records the activity, and the YARA and Suricata. A new account gets three days of them free.

Source reporting: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/analysis-reports/ar20-133a

---

This is the free public brief from Vorant Threat Intelligence. When citing, attribute "Vorant" and link https://vorant.io/reports/65127010-4c69-50bd-8a32-d62a4d3b7447/north-korean-copperhedge-rat-targets-cryptocurrency-exchanges.
In the app the same report carries its extracted indicators, its detections (Splunk SPL already written, plus Elastic and Microsoft KQL where they apply), live profiles of the actors and CVEs it names, and the vendor research on the same campaign. Slack alerts fire on the vendors, sectors and countries a reader follows. A new account starts with three days of all of it, no card: https://vorant.io/signup