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MITRE ATT&CK® Malware

S0464: SYSCON

SYSCON is a backdoor that has been in use since at least 2017 and has been associated with campaigns involving North Korean themes. SYSCON has been delivered by the CARROTBALL and CARROTBAT droppers.[1][2]

EnterpriseS0464MalwareObject v1.1Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

S0464: SYSCON describes [SYSCON](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0464) is a backdoor that has been in use since at least 2017 and has been associated with campaigns involving North Korean themes. [SYSCON](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0464) has been delivered by the [CARROTBALL](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0465) and [CARROTBAT](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0462) droppers.(Citation: Unit 42 CARROTBAT November 2018)(Citation: Unit 42 CARROTBAT January 2020)

Executive priority

S0464: SYSCON 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 S0464: SYSCON 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 S0464: SYSCON 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

SYSCON

SYSCON is a backdoor that has been in use since at least 2017 and has been associated with campaigns involving North Korean themes. SYSCON has been delivered by the CARROTBALL and CARROTBAT droppers.[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.

5 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1082System Information Discovery

SYSCON has the ability to use Systeminfo to identify system information.[2]

EnterpriseT1059.003Windows Command ShellSub-technique

SYSCON has the ability to execute commands through cmd on a compromised host.[2]

EnterpriseT1204.002Malicious FileSub-technique

SYSCON has been executed by luring victims to open malicious e-mail attachments.[1]

EnterpriseT1057Process Discovery

SYSCON has the ability to use Tasklist to list running processes.[2]

EnterpriseT1071.002File Transfer ProtocolsSub-technique

SYSCON has the ability to use FTP in C2 communications.[1][2]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

CampaignEnterprise

C0006: Operation Honeybee

Operation Honeybee was a campaign that targeted humanitarian aid and inter-Korean affairs organizations from at least late 2017 through early 2018. Operation Honeybee initially targeted South Korea, but expanded to include Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Argentina, and Canada. Security researchers assessed the threat actors were likely Korean speakers based on metadata used in both lure documents and executables, and named the campaign "Honeybee" after the author name discovered in malicious Word documents.[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
1.1
Created
Modified
Raw hash
42e87ca6b518d901...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.21.1Current bundle42e87ca6b518…
19.11.1Older bundle42e87ca6b518…
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]
    Unit 42 CARROTBAT November 2018

    Grunzweig, J. and Wilhoit, K. (2018, November 29). The Fractured Block Campaign: CARROTBAT Used to Deliver Malware Targeting Southeast Asia. Retrieved June 2, 2020.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Unit 42 CARROTBAT January 2020

    McCabe, A. (2020, January 23). The Fractured Statue Campaign: U.S. Government Agency Targeted in Spear-Phishing Attacks. Retrieved June 2, 2020.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    mitre-attackS0464
    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.