Fareit

Category: infostealer · Aliases: Fareit, Pony · Sample count (EMBER 2018): 10,955 · Enrichment: curated_sourced · Updated: 2026-06-09
Category: InfostealerActor: Unknown / CybercriminalIndustry: Financial Services, Retail, ConsumersMotivation: Opportunistic

Overview

Fareit (closely associated with Pony) is credential-stealing spyware. Per Malwarebytes' description of Spyware.Pony, it may run in the background and silently collect information about the system, connected users, and network activity. It harvests stored credentials from browsers, email, and FTP clients and can act as a downloader for additional malware; the leak of the Pony Loader source code led to its use by many threat actors.

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: T1555.003 T1539 T1552.001 T1041 T1105

Tactical Mitigations

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

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_FAREIT {
    meta:
        description = "Detects Fareit (infostealer)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
        date = "2026-07-06"
    strings:
        $s1 = "fareit" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "fareit" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "pony" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: Suspicious Fareit Activity
id: c1946f0891a6bef8f678116b460a29e8
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the fareit malware family.
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
        CommandLine|contains:
            - "*fareit*"
            - "*fareit*"
            - "*pony*"
    condition: selection
level: medium

References & External Analysis

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Fareit?

Credential-stealing spyware, closely related to Pony, that silently collects system, user, and network information and harvests stored passwords.

What does Fareit/Pony steal?

Stored credentials from browsers, email, and FTP clients, among other data.

Can Fareit do more than steal data?

Yes; it also has downloader capabilities to fetch additional malware.

Why is Fareit/Pony so widespread?

The Pony Loader source code leaked online, leading many different threat actors to adopt and modify it.

How can I protect credentials from Fareit?

Use a password manager and multi-factor authentication, avoid suspicious attachments and downloads, and keep security software updated.

Where can I read an authoritative source on Fareit/Pony?

Malwarebytes maintains a Spyware.Pony detection page, linked on this page.

How do I remove the Fareit Infostealer from Windows?

Manual removal of Fareit 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 Fareit a virus or a Infostealer?

Fareit is classified as a Infostealer. Unlike traditional viruses that infect files, modern malware like Fareit typically operates as a standalone payload designed to compromise systems, steal data, or deploy secondary stage implants.

What are the main symptoms of a Fareit infection?

Symptoms of Fareit 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: infostealer)

Explore other malware families in the same category:

Protect Your Network Against Infostealers

Want to prevent Fareit and similar threats from compromising your organization? Read our comprehensive defensive guide: Infostealer Protection Guide.

Need help with an active incident? Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.

Machine-readable

Get this profile as JSON: https://jordan123234-malware-families-explorer.static.hf.space/api/fareit.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.