Neutrinopos

Overview

Trojan:Win32/Neutrinopos is a highly destructive, specialized Point-of-Sale (PoS) trojan engineered exclusively to infiltrate retail environments, scrape the RAM of PoS terminals for unencrypted credit card Track 1 and Track 2 data, and exfiltrate it to cybercriminals.

Understanding NeutrinoPOS
To the retail cashier, the PoS terminal appears to function normally. For incident responders, NeutrinoPOS represents a catastrophic breach of PCI-DSS compliance and a massive financial liability. Unlike traditional trojans that target files or keystrokes, NeutrinoPOS specifically targets the fleeting moment when a credit card is swiped and processed in the terminal's Random Access Memory (RAM), bypassing end-to-end encryption if the terminal architecture is flawed.

Execution and Evasion Strategies
NeutrinoPOS is typically deployed laterally by attackers who have already breached the corporate network (often via compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials). The attacker pushes the NeutrinoPOS executable to the specific PoS terminals. Upon execution, it establishes persistence (often via a Windows Service). Its core function is a continuous loop of RAM scraping (`T1005`). It iterates through the memory space of running processes (like `pos.exe` or `aloha.exe`), using regular expressions to identify the specific structure of credit card Track 1 and Track 2 data. Once identified, the data is encrypted, saved to a hidden log file, and exfiltrated to the C2 server, often via DNS tunneling or HTTP POST requests.

Indicators of Compromise & Impact
The impact is a massive theft of customer payment data, resulting in severe reputational and financial damage. Incident responders will observe EDR alerts for continuous, aggressive memory reading (scans) across multiple processes. Network logs may reveal anomalous outbound HTTP traffic from PoS terminals that should strictly be communicating only with payment gateways. The presence of unexpectedly large, encrypted log files in the `%Temp%` or application directory of the PoS software is a strong IoC.

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:

• T1059.003: Restrict execution of Windows Command Shell (cmd.exe) and block unauthorized batch scripts.

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

Sigma Rule

title: Suspicious Neutrinopos Activity
id: 36d7581b81f6c38754430d5df15876ab
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the neutrinopos malware family.
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
        CommandLine|contains:
            - "*neutrinopos*"
    condition: selection
level: medium

Containment & Response Steps

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

1. Immediately sever all infected PoS terminals from the internet and the corporate network to halt the exfiltration of credit card data.
2. Capture a forensic RAM image of the infected terminals to confirm the presence of the scraping regex and identify any stolen data still in memory.
3. Initiate immediate incident response protocols per PCI-DSS requirements, including notifying acquiring banks and payment processors.
4. Identify the lateral movement vector (e.g., exposed RDP, weak service accounts) used to deploy the malware to the PoS segment and close it.

What to Avoid

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

1. Do not reboot the PoS terminal until a forensic RAM image is captured; rebooting destroys the evidence of the active RAM scraping.
2. Avoid assuming the threat is isolated to a single terminal; PoS malware is almost always deployed network-wide by the attacker.

References & External Analysis

• Search "neutrinopos" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Families (Category: trojan)

Explore other malware families in the same category:

• Moonpie
• Nemesis
• Goldun
• Xxybvi
• Xiclog

Machine-readable

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