{
  "family": "rebhip",
  "sample_count": 120,
  "category": "rat",
  "description": "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.<br><br><b>What is Rebhip?</b><br>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.<br><br><b>Infection Vectors & Threat Hunting</b><br>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.<br><br><b>Forensic Analysis & Impact</b><br>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 <code>HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Advanced</code> (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.",
  "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.",
  "aliases": [],
  "enrichment_level": "expert-seo",
  "faq": [],
  "faq_count": 0,
  "mitre_attack": [
    "T1091",
    "T1105",
    "T1547.001",
    "T1564.001",
    "T1055"
  ],
  "cisa_advisory": null,
  "last_updated": "2026-06-09",
  "mitre_attack_detail": [
    {
      "id": "T1091",
      "name": "Replication Through Removable Media",
      "tactic": "Lateral Movement"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1564.001",
      "name": "Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories",
      "tactic": "Defense Evasion"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1055",
      "name": "Process Injection",
      "tactic": "Defense Evasion"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1547.001",
      "name": "Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder",
      "tactic": "Persistence"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1105",
      "name": "Ingress Tool Transfer",
      "tactic": "Command and Control"
    }
  ],
  "containment_steps": [
    "Disable the Windows 'AutoRun' and 'AutoPlay' features via Group Policy across the entire domain to halt the worm's primary propagation method.",
    "Confiscate and forensically wipe any USB drives or removable media that were connected to the infected endpoint.",
    "Use EDR or command-line tools to forcefully unhide the legitimate directories on infected USB drives and delete the malicious `.lnk` files.",
    "Isolate the endpoint and remove the Rebhip persistence keys from the Windows Registry."
  ],
  "what_to_avoid": [
    "Do not insert a potentially infected USB drive into a clean analysis machine unless AutoRun is strictly disabled and the machine is sandboxed.",
    "Do not assume the network is clean if one host is infected; Rebhip actively scans for and infects open network shares."
  ],
  "target_industries": [
    "Global / Opportunistic"
  ],
  "motivation": "Opportunistic",
  "threat_actors": [
    "Unknown / Cybercriminal"
  ],
  "target_geographies": [
    "Global"
  ]
}