Worm:Win32/Rebhip is a stealthy and prolific Windows worm and trojan primarily known for its ability to spread rapidly across removable media and local network shares.
What is Rebhip?
To the average user, a Rebhip infection is often unnoticed until USB drives begin behaving erratically or files appear to go missing. For security analysts, Rebhip is a classic self-propagating worm that poses a significant risk to air-gapped or loosely secured corporate environments. Its primary objective is to infect as many systems as possible, establish a backdoor, and await commands from a remote server.
Infection Vectors & Threat Hunting
Rebhip's signature propagation method involves copying itself to USB flash drives and external hard drives. It heavily utilizes the `autorun.inf` mechanism to execute automatically when the drive is inserted into a new machine. Furthermore, it often hides the legitimate folders on the USB drive and replaces them with malicious shortcuts (LNK files) that bear the folder icon; when a user clicks the fake folder, the worm executes. Once on a host, Rebhip injects into `svchost.exe` and modifies the registry to ensure it starts upon reboot.
Forensic Analysis & Impact
Threat hunters investigating Rebhip will find anomalous `autorun.inf` files, hidden directories, and suspicious `.lnk` files on removable media. EDR platforms frequently flag Rebhip for its unauthorized modifications to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced (specifically altering the `Hidden` value to prevent users from seeing hidden files). The malware also establishes outbound HTTP connections to its C2 infrastructure to download secondary payloads.
Observed techniques used by this family, mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework:
| Technique | Name | Tactic |
|---|---|---|
T1091 | Replication Through Removable Media | Lateral Movement |
T1564.001 | Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories | Defense Evasion |
T1055 | Process Injection | Defense Evasion |
T1547.001 | Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder | Persistence |
T1105 | Ingress Tool Transfer | Command and Control |
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_REBHIP {
meta:
description = "Detects Rebhip (rat)"
author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
date = "2026-07-06"
strings:
$s1 = "rebhip" ascii wide nocase
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}title: Suspicious Rebhip Activity
id: 1378f4e7d38c22dda6c01fcb74f816e6
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the rebhip malware family.
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection:
Image|endswith:
- '\cmd.exe'
- '\powershell.exe'
CommandLine|contains:
- "*rebhip*"
condition: selection
level: mediumOrdered checklist for responders. Adapt to your environment and engage professional support for active incidents.
Common mistakes during response to this family that can destroy evidence, spread the infection, or worsen recovery.
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Get this profile as JSON: https://jordanricky1604-ship-it.github.io/malware-families-catalog/api/rebhip.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.