SALTWATER
- First seen
- 2023-06-01 00:00:00
- Malware type
- backdoor
- Profile updated
- 2026-07-07 13:09:38
Targeted industries: government-and-public-sector technology-and-telecommunications
Context
According to Mandiant, SALTWATER is a module for the Barracuda SMTP daemon (bsmtpd) that has backdoor functionality. SALTWATER can upload or download arbitrary files, execute commands, and has proxy and tunneling capabilities. The backdoor is implemented using hooks on the send, recv, close syscalls via the 3rd party kubo/funchook hooking library, and amounts to five components, most of which are referred to as "Channels" within the binary. In addition to providing backdoor and proxying capabilities, these components exhibit classic backdoor functionality.
Detection coverage
- 1 YARA rules
Detection rules
- SIGNATURE_BASE_MAL_ELF_SALTWATER_Jun23_1 (yara-rule)
Reports & references
- cloud.google.com — Barracuda Esg Exploited Globally (report)
- youtube.com — Watch (report)
- sansorg.egnyte.com — 8Ekljcphpj (report)
- CISA — Mar 10454006.R5.V1.Clear 0 (report)
- Mandiant — Chinese Espionage Tactics (report)
- malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de — Elf.Saltwater (report)
- Mandiant — Barracuda Esg Exploited Globally (report)