The "AutoHK" malware family refers to a broad category of malicious programs that utilize AutoHotkey (AHK), a legitimate and open-source scripting language designed for keyboard shortcuts and Windows automation. Attackers frequently abuse AutoHotkey to create, bundle, and execute malicious scripts while attempting to evade detection by security software. By packaging malicious AHK scripts with the AutoHotkey interpreter into a single executable file, attackers can obfuscate their code and bypass simple signature-based antivirus detection. These scripts are often used for keylogging, taking screenshots, and data exfiltration.
These YARA and Sigma rules are auto-generated based on the family name and aliases. They must be heavily tuned before deployment in a production environment.
rule MALWARE_WIN_AUTOHK {
meta:
description = "Detects Autohk (packer)"
author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
date = "2026-07-06"
strings:
$s1 = "autohk" ascii wide nocase
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}title: Suspicious Autohk Activity
id: 5b31cac10dcf0956ad3141fea9815844
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the autohk malware family.
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection:
Image|endswith:
- '\cmd.exe'
- '\powershell.exe'
CommandLine|contains:
- "*autohk*"
condition: selection
level: mediumBecause AutoHotkey is widely used by attackers to bundle and execute malicious scripts, security tools sometimes flag harmless AutoHotkey scripts as "AutoHK" malware as a false positive.
Attackers compile malicious scripts into a single executable file alongside the legitimate AutoHotkey interpreter, masking the malware as a standard application to evade static analysis.
Explore other malware families in the same category:
Get this profile as JSON: https://jordanricky1604-ship-it.github.io/malware-families-catalog/api/autohk.json
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, Replit, StackBlitz, CodeSandbox, and CodePen.