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MITRE ATT&CK® Malware

S0335: Carbon

Carbon is a sophisticated, second-stage backdoor and framework that can be used to steal sensitive information from victims. Carbon has been selectively used by Turla to target government and foreign affairs-related organizations in Central Asia.[1][2]

EnterpriseS0335MalwareObject v1.2Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

S0335: Carbon describes [Carbon](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0335) is a sophisticated, second-stage backdoor and framework that can be used to steal sensitive information from victims. [Carbon](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0335) has been selectively used by [Turla](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0010) to target government and foreign affairs-related organizations in Central Asia.(Citation: ESET Carbon Mar 2017)(Citation: Securelist Turla Oct 2018)

Executive priority

S0335: Carbon 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 S0335: Carbon 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 S0335: Carbon 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

Carbon

Carbon is a sophisticated, second-stage backdoor and framework that can be used to steal sensitive information from victims. Carbon has been selectively used by Turla to target government and foreign affairs-related organizations in Central Asia.[1][2]

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.

18 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1053.005Scheduled TaskSub-technique

Carbon creates several tasks for later execution to continue persistence on the victim’s machine.[1]

EnterpriseT1102Web Service

Carbon can use Pastebin to receive C2 commands.CitationAccenture HyperStack October 2020

EnterpriseT1049System Network Connections Discovery

Carbon uses the netstat -r and netstat -an commands.CitationGovCERT Carbon May 2016

EnterpriseT1012Query Registry

Carbon enumerates values in the Registry.[1]

EnterpriseT1069Permission Groups Discovery

Carbon uses the net group command.CitationGovCERT Carbon May 2016

EnterpriseT1124System Time Discovery

Carbon uses the command net time \\127.0.0.1 to get information the system’s time.CitationGovCERT Carbon May 2016

EnterpriseT1016System Network Configuration Discovery

Carbon can collect the IP address of the victims and other computers on the network using the commands: ipconfig -all nbtstat -n, and nbtstat -s.[1]CitationGovCERT Carbon May 2016

EnterpriseT1074.001Local Data StagingSub-technique

Carbon creates a base directory that contains the files and folders that are collected.[1]

EnterpriseT1543.003Windows ServiceSub-technique

Carbon establishes persistence by creating a service and naming it based off the operating system version running on the current machine.[1]

EnterpriseT1573.002Asymmetric CryptographySub-technique

Carbon has used RSA encryption for C2 communications.CitationAccenture HyperStack October 2020

EnterpriseT1140Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

Carbon decrypts task and configuration files for execution.[1]CitationAccenture HyperStack October 2020

EnterpriseT1048.003Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 ProtocolSub-technique

Carbon uses HTTP to send data to the C2 server.[1]

EnterpriseT1018Remote System Discovery

Carbon uses the net view command.CitationGovCERT Carbon May 2016

EnterpriseT1071.001Web ProtocolsSub-technique

Carbon can use HTTP in C2 communications.CitationAccenture HyperStack October 2020

EnterpriseT1027Obfuscated Files or Information

Carbon encrypts configuration files and tasks for the malware to complete using CAST-128 algorithm.[1]CitationAccenture HyperStack October 2020

EnterpriseT1095Non-Application Layer Protocol

Carbon uses TCP and UDP for C2.[1]

EnterpriseT1055.001Dynamic-link Library InjectionSub-technique

Carbon has a command to inject code into a process.[1]

EnterpriseT1057Process Discovery

Carbon can list the processes on the victim’s machine.[1]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

GroupEnterprise

G0010: Turla

Turla is a cyber espionage threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). They have compromised victims in over 50 countries since at least 2004, spanning a range of industries including government, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies. Turla is known for conducting watering hole and spearphishing campaigns, and leveraging in-house tools and malware, such as Uroburos.[1][2][3][4][5]

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
20.0
Object version
1.2
Created
Modified
Raw hash
dd9f4e0a991e7a75...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(3)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
20.01.2Current bundledd9f4e0a991e…
19.21.2Older bundledd9f4e0a991e…
19.11.2Older bundledd9f4e0a991e…
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]
    ESET Carbon Mar 2017

    ESET. (2017, March 30). Carbon Paper: Peering into Turla’s second stage backdoor. Retrieved November 7, 2018.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Securelist Turla Oct 2018

    Kaspersky Lab's Global Research & Analysis Team. (2018, October 04). Shedding Skin – Turla’s Fresh Faces. Retrieved November 7, 2018.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    Carbon

    (Citation: ESET Carbon Mar 2017)(Citation: Securelist Turla Oct 2018)

  4. [4]
    mitre-attackS0335
    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.