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MITRE ATT&CK® Malware

S9011: BRUSHFIRE

BRUSHFIRE is a passive backdoor written in C that executes in-memory within an existing process. First reported in March 2025, BRUSHFIRE has been observed in activity attributed to People's Republic of China (PRC) state-affiliated threat actors, including UNC5221 and SYLVANITE.[1][2][3]

EnterpriseS9011MalwareObject v1.0Modified
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

S9011: BRUSHFIRE describes [BRUSHFIRE](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S9011) is a passive backdoor written in C that executes in-memory within an existing process. First reported in March 2025, [BRUSHFIRE](https://attack.mitre.org/software/S9011) has been observed in activity attributed to People's Republic of China (PRC) state-affiliated threat actors, including UNC5221 and SYLVANITE.(Citation: Dragos SYLVANITE MuddyWater Electrum March 2026)(Citation: Google UNC5221 Ivanti April 2025)(Citation: Picus Security UNC5221 Ivanti May 2025)

Executive priority

S9011: BRUSHFIRE 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 S9011: BRUSHFIRE by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (the mapped ATT&CK tactic context), supported platforms (Linux, Network Devices), 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 S9011: BRUSHFIRE 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

BRUSHFIRE

BRUSHFIRE is a passive backdoor written in C that executes in-memory within an existing process. First reported in March 2025, BRUSHFIRE has been observed in activity attributed to People's Republic of China (PRC) state-affiliated threat actors, including UNC5221 and SYLVANITE.[1][2][3]

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.

4 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1140Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information

BRUSHFIRE has decrypted XOR strings prior to execution.[2]

EnterpriseT1048.002Exfiltration Over Asymmetric Encrypted Non-C2 ProtocolSub-technique

BRUSHFIRE has the ability to exfiltrate data on-demand through executing commands obtained via monitoring for specially crafted packets and sending output back in an embedded SSL response.[3]

EnterpriseT1205Traffic Signaling

BRUSHFIRE has monitored inbound VPN traffic to compromised appliances until specific inbound packets contain a specific magic string/pattern instead of external beaconing.[3]

EnterpriseT1620Reflective Code Loading

BRUSHFIRE has executed its commands within memory and is not saved on disk.[2][3]

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
1.0
Created
Modified
Raw hash
ea132a21790b6abe...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.21.0Current bundleea132a21790b…
19.11.0Older bundleea132a21790b…
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]
    Dragos SYLVANITE MuddyWater Electrum March 2026

    Dragos. (2026, March 24). Dragos 2026 OT Cybersecurity Report: Year in Review, O&G and Petrochemicals Focus. Retrieved April 17, 2026.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Google UNC5221 Ivanti April 2025

    John Wolfram, Michael Edie, Jacob Thompson, Matt Lin, Josh Murchie. (2025, April 3). Suspected China-Nexus Threat Actor Actively Exploiting Critical Ivanti Connect Secure Vulnerability (CVE-2025-22457). Retrieved April 13, 2026.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    Picus Security UNC5221 Ivanti May 2025

    Sila Ozeren Hacioglu. (2025, May 5). UNC5221’s Latest Exploit: Weaponizing CVE-2025-22457 in Ivanti Connect Secure. Retrieved April 13, 2026.

    Open source URL
  4. [4]
    mitre-attackS9011
    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.