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MITRE ATT&CK® Malware

S0172: Reaver

Reaver is a malware family that has been in the wild since at least late 2016. Reporting indicates victims have primarily been associated with the "Five Poisons," which are movements the Chinese government considers dangerous. The type of malware is rare due to its final payload being in the form of Control Panel items.[1]

EnterpriseS0172MalwareObject v1.3Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

S0172: Reaver describes [Reaver](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0172) is a malware family that has been in the wild since at least late 2016. Reporting indicates victims have primarily been associated with the "Five Poisons," which are movements the Chinese government considers dangerous. The type of malware is rare due to its final payload being in the form of [Control Panel](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/002) items.(Citation: Palo Alto Reaver Nov 2017)

Executive priority

S0172: Reaver is an official MITRE ATT&CK software. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.

Technical view

Security teams should validate S0172: Reaver by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (Windows), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.

Likely telemetry

  • Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
  • Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry

Detection direction

  • Validate whether S0172: Reaver appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
  • Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
  • Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.

Mitigation priorities

  • Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
  • Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
  • Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits

Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.

This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Reaver

Reaver is a malware family that has been in the wild since at least late 2016. Reporting indicates victims have primarily been associated with the "Five Poisons," which are movements the Chinese government considers dangerous. The type of malware is rare due to its final payload being in the form of Control Panel items.[1]

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

How security teams should use this page

Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.

ATT&CK relationship table

Techniques used

This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.

14 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1547.009Shortcut ModificationSub-technique

Reaver creates a shortcut file and saves it in a Startup folder to establish persistence.[1]

EnterpriseT1070.004File DeletionSub-technique

Reaver deletes the original dropped file from the victim.[1]

EnterpriseT1547.001Registry Run Keys / Startup FolderSub-technique

Reaver creates a shortcut file and saves it in a Startup folder to establish persistence.[1]

EnterpriseT1027.013Encrypted/Encoded FileSub-technique

Reaver encrypts some of its files with XOR.[1]

EnterpriseT1095Non-Application Layer Protocol

Some Reaver variants use raw TCP for C2.[1]

EnterpriseT1071.001Web ProtocolsSub-technique

Some Reaver variants use HTTP for C2.[1]

EnterpriseT1560.003Archive via Custom MethodSub-technique

Reaver encrypts collected data with an incremental XOR key prior to exfiltration.[1]

EnterpriseT1218.002Control PanelSub-technique

Reaver drops and executes a malicious CPL file as its payload.[1]

EnterpriseT1680Local Storage Discovery

Reaver collects volume serial number from the victim.[1]

EnterpriseT1033System Owner/User Discovery

Reaver collects the victim's username.[1]

EnterpriseT1543.003Windows ServiceSub-technique

Reaver installs itself as a new service.[1]

EnterpriseT1082System Information Discovery

Reaver collects system information from the victim, including CPU speed, computer name, ANSI code page, OEM code page identifier for the OS, Microsoft Windows version, and memory information.[1]

EnterpriseT1012Query Registry

Reaver queries the Registry to determine the correct Startup path to use for persistence.[1]

EnterpriseT1016System Network Configuration Discovery

Reaver collects the victim's IP address.[1]

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

Change history

Object version and sync metadata

The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.

ATT&CK release
19.2
Object version
1.3
Created
Modified
Raw hash
e6a078436153da24...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.21.3Current bundlee6a078436153…
19.11.3Older bundlee6a078436153…
Raw source

Mirrored ATT&CK source object

The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.

Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    Palo Alto Reaver Nov 2017

    Grunzweig, J. and Miller-Osborn, J. (2017, November 10). New Malware with Ties to SunOrcal Discovered. Retrieved November 16, 2017.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Reaver

    (Citation: Palo Alto Reaver Nov 2017)

  3. [3]
    mitre-attackS0172
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.