Sathurbot

Overview

Trojan:Win32/Sathurbot is a sophisticated botnet agent known for its unique propagation and Command and Control (C2) methods. Unlike bots that rely solely on email spam, Sathurbot actively utilizes torrents and compromised WordPress sites to distribute itself (`T1189`), and leverages legitimate search engines or peer-to-peer mechanisms for resilience (`T1071.001`).

Understanding Sathurbot (Botnet Architecture)
To an end-user, the infection is silent, though their internet connection may seem saturated. For a SOC analyst, a Sathurbot detection indicates the machine has been drafted into a global criminal network. It will be used to scrape the web for vulnerable CMS sites, perform brute-force attacks, or seed malicious torrents to infect others.

Execution and Propagation Mechanics
Sathurbot frequently arrives bundled within cracked software or pirated movies downloaded via torrents (`T1204.002`). Once executed, it establishes persistence and immediately begins communicating with its C2 infrastructure. Sathurbot is notable for using heavily obfuscated, multi-stage loading to evade detection (`T1027`). Once integrated into the botnet, the infected machine receives 'jobs'. These jobs often involve performing automated Google or Bing searches to find WordPress sites, and then launching dictionary attacks (`T1110`) against their login pages to expand the botnet's infrastructure.

Indicators of Compromise & Impact
The impact includes the consumption of network resources and the legal liability of the endpoint participating in attacks against third parties. Host-based IoCs include high CPU usage (during brute-force tasks) and the presence of unknown executables in the `%AppData%` directory. Network IoCs are highly distinct: an infected host will generate massive amounts of automated traffic to search engines, followed by numerous HTTP POST requests (login attempts) to `wp-login.php` pages on hundreds of unrelated domains.

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

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

Tactical Mitigations

Based on the techniques used by this family, consider the following defensive strategies:

• 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_SATHURBOT {
    meta:
        description = "Detects Sathurbot (trojan)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
        date = "2026-07-06"
    strings:
        $s1 = "sathurbot" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: Suspicious Sathurbot Activity
id: e851c42d39b8b69dbecf1fcd3d7a1707
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the sathurbot malware family.
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
        CommandLine|contains:
            - "*sathurbot*"
    condition: selection
level: medium

Containment & Response Steps

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

1. Isolate the endpoint from the network to stop it from participating in brute-force attacks against external infrastructure.
2. Analyze EDR logs to identify the initial executable (likely downloaded via a torrent client) that launched the Sathurbot agent.
3. Review DNS logs to identify the C2 domains providing instructions to the bot, and block them.
4. Ensure endpoint AV signatures are updated and run a full system scan to remove the persistent bot components.

What to Avoid

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

1. Do not ignore 'abuse' emails from ISPs regarding your IP address performing brute-force attacks; this is a primary indicator of a Sathurbot infection.
2. Avoid relying solely on blocking the target IPs the bot is attacking; the C2 server will simply issue new targets.

References & External Analysis

• Search "sathurbot" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Families (Category: trojan)

Explore other malware families in the same category:

• Pcfixer
• Bindjpg
• Zeusvm
• Staem
• Adkdllwrapper

Machine-readable

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