Huntpos

Overview

Malware:Win32/Huntpos is a highly destructive and specialized Point-of-Sale (PoS) malware family. It is engineered specifically to target retail, hospitality, and food service environments. Its primary objective is to scrape the volatile memory (RAM) of infected PoS terminals to extract unencrypted credit card Track 1 and Track 2 data before the transaction is encrypted and sent to the payment processor. This stolen data is then exfiltrated and sold on dark web carding forums (like Joker's Stash).

Understanding Huntpos (PoS RAM Scrapers)
To a retail employee using the register, the machine functions normally, allowing transactions to process. However, to a security operations center (SOC) or a forensic investigator, a Huntpos infection represents a catastrophic PCI-DSS breach, leading to massive financial liability, brand damage, and regulatory fines (`T1005`).

Execution and Memory Scraping Mechanics
Huntpos is typically deployed after attackers gain initial access to the corporate network (often via compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) - `T1133` - or phishing) and move laterally to the isolated PoS VLAN. Once executed on a terminal, Huntpos establishes persistence as a Windows Service (`T1543.003`). It operates by continuously iterating through the memory space of running processes (specifically targeting the payment application executable). It uses regular expressions (Regex) to identify data patterns matching the format of credit card magnetic stripe data (Track 1/Track 2) (`T1005`). Once identified, the data is dumped to a hidden, encrypted log file on disk (`T1074.001`) and periodically exfiltrated to an external C2 server via HTTP POST requests (`T1041`).

Indicators of Compromise & Impact
The impact is massive financial fraud resulting from compromised customer payment cards. Host-based IoCs include the presence of unexpected Windows Services on PoS terminals, anomalous DLLs injected into the payment application process, and the existence of encrypted, hidden log files (often disguised with generic names like `syslog.dat` or `winstat.tmp`) in system directories. Network IoCs include the PoS terminal making unexpected outbound HTTP connections to external, non-whitelisted IP addresses.

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

Observed techniques used by this family, mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework:

Generated Detections (Boilerplate)

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.

YARA Rule

rule MALWARE_WIN_HUNTPOS {
    meta:
        description = "Detects Huntpos (advanced_threat)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
        date = "2026-07-06"
    strings:
        $s1 = "huntpos" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: Suspicious Huntpos Activity
id: daf9cd62336e536d7bdb769872b56c3c
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the huntpos malware family.
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
        CommandLine|contains:
            - "*huntpos*"
    condition: selection
level: medium

Containment & Response Steps

Ordered checklist for responders. Adapt to your environment and engage professional support for active incidents.

1. Immediately disconnect the infected PoS terminals from the network (unplug the Ethernet cable) to halt the exfiltration of stolen credit card data.
2. Do NOT reboot or power off the PoS terminal; volatile memory (RAM) contains critical forensic evidence, including the malware's active processes and potentially unencrypted card data.
3. Engage a specialized Incident Response (IR) firm and a PCI Forensic Investigator (PFI) immediately, as required by PCI-DSS regulations.
4. Perform a massive enterprise hunt across the entire PoS network VLAN for similar indicators of compromise; PoS malware is rarely deployed to a single machine.

What to Avoid

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

1. Do not attempt to 'clean' the PoS terminal with standard antivirus; the machine is compromised and must be forensically imaged and then securely wiped.
2. Avoid communicating about the breach on the compromised corporate network; use out-of-band communication.

References & External Analysis

• Search "huntpos" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Families (Category: advanced_threat)

Explore other malware families in the same category:

• Zapchast
• Toggle
• Bhoint
• Opendownloadmanager
• Nicehashminer

Machine-readable

Get this profile as JSON: https://jordanricky1604-ship-it.github.io/malware-families-catalog/api/huntpos.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.