Infinitetear
Overview
Executive Summary
InfiniteTear is a highly sophisticated, stealthy Backdoor and Remote Access Trojan (RAT) historically associated with Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups engaging in targeted espionage. It is designed to provide threat actors with long-term, covert access to high-value networks, enabling the exfiltration of sensitive intellectual property, government secrets, or corporate strategies while remaining undetected by standard security controls.Infection Vector and Technical Capabilities
InfiniteTear is not distributed broadly. It is deployed selectively, typically following a successful spear-phishing campaign that delivers a primary loader, or deployed laterally by an attacker who has already breached the network perimeter using stolen credentials or zero-day exploits. Once deployed, InfiniteTear exhibits advanced capabilities:- Deep Stealth and Evasion: The malware often operates entirely in memory (fileless execution) to evade disk-based anti-virus scans. It employs complex API hooking and process hollowing to inject itself into legitimate system processes (like `svchost.exe`), masking its execution.
- Custom Encrypted C2: InfiniteTear utilizes highly customized, encrypted protocols for Command and Control (C2) communication. It often blends its traffic with legitimate protocols (like HTTPS or DNS) and utilizes domain generation algorithms (DGAs) or hardcoded, compromised infrastructure to make detection difficult.
- Advanced Espionage Toolset: The backdoor provides a comprehensive suite of espionage tools, allowing operators to execute arbitrary commands, harvest credentials from LSASS memory, capture screens, log keystrokes, and silently compress and exfiltrate specific files or databases.
Threat Assessment
The detection of InfiniteTear on a network is a critical, "break-glass" security incident. It indicates a successful, targeted breach by a highly capable adversary (often state-sponsored or highly organized cybercriminals). The primary concern is not system destruction, but the silent, long-term hemorrhaging of critical data.Incident Response and Remediation
- Forensic Triage and Containment: Do not immediately wipe the machine. Isolate the endpoint from the internet, but keep it powered on to allow Incident Response teams to capture volatile memory (RAM) to analyze the memory-resident components and identify the C2 infrastructure.
- Enterprise-Wide Threat Hunt: The presence of InfiniteTear on one endpoint guarantees lateral movement has occurred. A comprehensive enterprise-wide threat hunt must be initiated to identify all compromised assets, stolen credentials, and secondary backdoors.
- Complete Architecture Review: Remediation requires a full rebuild of the compromised endpoints from clean baselines, a complete reset of the Active Directory environment (including the KRBTGT account), and a fundamental review of network segmentation and access controls.
Known aliases
Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:
MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
This family has been observed using the following ATT&CK techniques: T1059.003 T1055 T1071.001 T1003.001 T1048
Tactical Mitigations
Based on the techniques used by this family, consider the following defensive strategies:
- T1003.001: Monitor for LSASS memory dumping or registry SAM extraction. Enable Credential Guard on Windows systems.
- T1059.003: Restrict execution of Windows Command Shell (cmd.exe) and block unauthorized batch scripts.
- T1071.001: Implement web filtering and SSL/TLS inspection to detect malicious command and control (C2) traffic hiding in HTTP/HTTPS.
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_INFINITETEAR {
meta:
description = "Detects Infinitetear (trojan)"
author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
date = "2026-07-06"
strings:
$s1 = "infinitetear" ascii wide nocase
$s2 = "backdoor.infinitetear" ascii wide nocase
$s3 = "apt.infinitetear" ascii wide nocase
$s4 = "trojan.tear" ascii wide nocase
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}Sigma Rule
title: Suspicious Infinitetear Activity
id: eb914509a473d7b2e6314dd7540f8a7f
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the infinitetear malware family.
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection:
Image|endswith:
- '\cmd.exe'
- '\powershell.exe'
CommandLine|contains:
- "*infinitetear*"
- "*backdoor.infinitetear*"
- "*apt.infinitetear*"
- "*trojan.tear*"
condition: selection
level: mediumReferences & External Analysis
- Search "infinitetear" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I remove the Infinitetear Trojan from Windows?
Manual removal of Infinitetear is highly discouraged as it may leave persistence mechanisms intact. We recommend disconnecting the device from the internet and utilizing a professional incident response service or enterprise-grade EDR software to conduct a full forensic sweep.
Is Infinitetear a virus or a Trojan?
Infinitetear is classified as a Trojan. Unlike traditional viruses that infect files, modern malware like Infinitetear typically operates as a standalone payload designed to compromise systems, steal data, or deploy secondary stage implants.
What are the main symptoms of a Infinitetear infection?
Symptoms of Infinitetear can include unexpected system slowness, unauthorized outbound network traffic to unknown IP addresses, disabled security software, and suspicious background processes running from AppData or Temp directories.
Related Families (Category: trojan)
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Protect Your Network Against Trojans
Want to prevent Infinitetear and similar threats from compromising your organization? Read our comprehensive defensive guide: Banking Trojan Protection.
Machine-readable
Get this profile as JSON: https://jordanricky1604-ship-it.github.io/malware-families-catalog/api/infinitetear.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.