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MITRE ATT&CK® Malware

S1085: Sardonic

Sardonic is a backdoor written in C and C++ that is known to be used by FIN8, as early as August 2021 to target a financial institution in the United States. Sardonic has a plugin system that can load specially made DLLs and execute their functions.[1][2]

EnterpriseS1085MalwareObject v1.1Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

S1085: Sardonic describes [Sardonic](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S1085) is a backdoor written in C and C++ that is known to be used by [FIN8](https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0061), as early as August 2021 to target a financial institution in the United States. [Sardonic](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S1085) has a plugin system that can load specially made DLLs and execute their functions.(Citation: Bitdefender Sardonic Aug 2021)(Citation: Symantec FIN8 Jul 2023)

Executive priority

S1085: Sardonic 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 S1085: Sardonic 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 S1085: Sardonic 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

Sardonic

Sardonic is a backdoor written in C and C++ that is known to be used by FIN8, as early as August 2021 to target a financial institution in the United States. Sardonic has a plugin system that can load specially made DLLs and execute their functions.[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.

25 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1047Windows Management Instrumentation

Sardonic can use WMI to execute PowerShell commands on a compromised machine.[1]

EnterpriseT1027.010Command ObfuscationSub-technique

Sardonic PowerShell scripts can be encrypted with RC4 and compressed using Gzip.[1]

EnterpriseT1082System Information Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to collect the computer name, and CPU manufacturer name from a compromised machine. Sardonic also has the ability to execute the `ver` and `systeminfo` commands.[1]

EnterpriseT1016System Network Configuration Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to execute the `ipconfig` command.[1]

EnterpriseT1573.001Symmetric CryptographySub-technique

Sardonic has the ability to use an RC4 key to encrypt communications to and from actor-controlled C2 servers.[1]

EnterpriseT1546.003Windows Management Instrumentation Event SubscriptionSub-technique

Sardonic can use a WMI event filter to invoke a command-line event consumer to gain persistence.[1]

EnterpriseT1105Ingress Tool Transfer

Sardonic has the ability to upload additional malicious files to a compromised machine.[1]

EnterpriseT1135Network Share Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to execute the `net view` command.[1]

EnterpriseT1140Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

Sardonic can first decrypt with the RC4 algorithm using a hardcoded decryption key before decompressing.[2]

EnterpriseT1005Data from Local System

Sardonic has the ability to collect data from a compromised machine to deliver to the attacker.[2]

EnterpriseT1059.003Windows Command ShellSub-technique

Sardonic has the ability to run `cmd.exe` or other interactive processes on a compromised computer.[2]

EnterpriseT1680Local Storage Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to collect the C:\ drive serial number from a compromised machine.[1]

EnterpriseT1571Non-Standard Port

Sardonic has the ability to connect with actor-controlled C2 servers using a custom binary protocol over port 443.[1]

EnterpriseT1057Process Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to execute the `tasklist` command.[1]

EnterpriseT1007System Service Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to execute the `net start` command.[1]

EnterpriseT1106Native API

Sardonic has the ability to call Win32 API functions to determine if `powershell.exe` is running.[1]

EnterpriseT1132.001Standard EncodingSub-technique

Sardonic can encode client ID data in 32 uppercase hex characters and transfer to the actor-controlled C2 server.[1]

EnterpriseT1070Indicator Removal

Sardonic has the ability to delete created WMI objects to evade detections.[1]

EnterpriseT1620Reflective Code Loading

Sardonic has a plugin system that can load specially made DLLs into memory and execute their functions.[1][2]

EnterpriseT1573.002Asymmetric CryptographySub-technique

Sardonic has the ability to send a random 64-byte RC4 key to communicate with actor-controlled C2 servers by using an RSA public key.[1]

EnterpriseT1027Obfuscated Files or Information

Sardonic can use certain ConfuserEx features for obfuscation and can be encoded in a base64 string.[2]

EnterpriseT1059.001PowerShellSub-technique

Sardonic has the ability to execute PowerShell commands on a compromised machine.[1]

EnterpriseT1049System Network Connections Discovery

Sardonic has the ability to execute the `netstat` command.[1]

EnterpriseT1055.004Asynchronous Procedure CallSub-technique

Sardonic can use the `QueueUserAPC` API to execute shellcode on a compromised machine.[2]

EnterpriseT1095Non-Application Layer Protocol

Sardonic can communicate with actor-controlled C2 servers by using a custom little-endian binary protocol.[1]

Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

GroupEnterprise

G0061: FIN8

FIN8 is a financially motivated threat group that has been active since at least January 2016, and known for targeting organizations in the hospitality, retail, entertainment, insurance, technology, chemical, and financial sectors. In June 2021, security researchers detected FIN8 switching from targeting point-of-sale (POS) devices to distributing a number of ransomware variants.[1][2][3][4]

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
770b016ead957713...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.21.1Current bundle770b016ead95…
19.11.1Older bundle770b016ead95…
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]
    Bitdefender Sardonic Aug 2021

    Budaca, E., et al. (2021, August 25). FIN8 Threat Actor Goes Agile with New Sardonic Backdoor. Retrieved August 9, 2023.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Symantec FIN8 Jul 2023

    Symantec Threat Hunter Team. (2023, July 18). FIN8 Uses Revamped Sardonic Backdoor to Deliver Noberus Ransomware. Retrieved August 9, 2023.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    mitre-attackS1085
    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.