Empire

First seen

2015-08-31 00:00:00

Malware type

rat, backdoor

Family

Malware family

Operating systems

linux, macos, windows

Related IoCs

11 (11 malicious)

Last IoC activity

2026-10-08 09:46:29

Profile updated

2026-07-07 15:30:45

Targeted industries: government-and-public-sector defense-and-aerospace financial-services technology-and-telecommunications

Context

Empire is an open-source, cross-platform remote administration and post-exploitation framework that is publicly available on GitHub. While the tool itself is primarily written in Python, the post-exploitation agents are written in pure PowerShell for Windows and Python for Linux/macOS. Empire was one of five tools singled out by a joint report on public hacking tools being widely used by adversaries.

Recent IoC activity

11 malicious indicators in Maltiverse are attributed to Empire (S0363). The 11 most recently updated:

Detection coverage

• 5 YARA rules
• 995 Sigma rules

Malware & tools used

• Video Capture (attack-pattern)
• Distributed Component Object Model (attack-pattern)
• Name Resolution Poisoning and SMB Relay (attack-pattern)
• System Network Configuration Discovery (attack-pattern)
• PowerShell (attack-pattern)
• Domain Trust Discovery (attack-pattern)
• Keylogging (attack-pattern)
• Command Obfuscation (attack-pattern)
• Local Account (attack-pattern)
• Screen Capture (attack-pattern)
• Network Service Discovery (attack-pattern)
• Credentials In Files (attack-pattern)
• Archive Collected Data (attack-pattern)
• Group Policy Modification (attack-pattern)
• Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (attack-pattern)
• System Information Discovery (attack-pattern)
• Clipboard Data (attack-pattern)
• Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (attack-pattern)
• Automated Exfiltration (attack-pattern)
• Accessibility Features (attack-pattern)
• Automated Collection (attack-pattern)
• Keychain (attack-pattern)
• Group Policy Discovery (attack-pattern)
• Domain Account (attack-pattern)
• Security Support Provider (attack-pattern)

Used by threat actors

• Wizard Spider (threat-actor)
• Sandworm Team (threat-actor)
• Indrik Spider (threat-actor)
• FIN10 (threat-actor)
• Turla (threat-actor)
• WIRTE (threat-actor)
• HEXANE (threat-actor)
• APT19 (threat-actor)
• APT41 (threat-actor)
• LazyScripter (threat-actor)
• Play (threat-actor)
• Silence (threat-actor)
• CopyKittens (threat-actor)
• APT33 (threat-actor)
• Leviathan (threat-actor)
• MuddyWater (threat-actor)
• FIN13 (threat-actor)
• Frankenstein (campaign)

Detection rules

• SEKOIA_Backdoor_Powershellempire_Batlauchers (yara-rule)
• SEKOIA_Backdoor_Powershellempire_Sharpire (yara-rule)
• SEKOIA_Gen_Empire_Onedrive_Stager (yara-rule)
• SEKOIA_Backdoor_Powershellempire_Python (yara-rule)
• SEKOIA_Backdoor_Powershellempire_Csharp (yara-rule)

Reports & references

• ncsc.gov.uk — Joint Report On Publicly Available Hacking Tools (report)
• MITRE ATT&CK — S0363 (report)
• github.com — Empire (report)
• github.com — Attck Empire (report)

External references

• mitre-attack — S0363
• EmPyre
• PowerShell Empire
• Github PowerShell Empire
• GitHub ATTACK Empire
• NCSC Joint Report Public Tools
• misp-galaxy
• misp-galaxy
• misp-galaxy
• misp-galaxy