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MALWAREBOX / RESEARCH

Indicators rotate.
Actors don't.

Actor-centric, not IOC-centric. Our own models for infrastructure, attribution and defensive prioritization, built in the gaps that ATT&CK, STIX, NIST and FAIR leave open on purpose.

RESEARCH FRAMEWORKS

Our frameworks, one research program

Each framework closes a gap that ATT&CK, STIX, the Diamond Model, NIST CSF or FAIR leave open by design. The analyses and the IIM feed below are evidence: proof these models hold up against real campaigns, not the main event.

IIM: Infrastructure Intelligence Model
v1.1 Draft CC BY 4.0
Indicators rotate. Actors don't. Infrastructure patterns outlive both.

A structural grammar for adversary infrastructure, positioned between short-lived IOCs and the deliberately abstract ATT&CK. Five layers: Entities (raw observation) to Relations to Roles (5 types: entry, redirector, staging, payload, c2) to Techniques (26, across 5 categories: Hosting, Resolution, Routing, Gating, Composition) to Chains and Patterns. Complementary to ATT&CK, to STIX 2.1 (lossless export) and to the Diamond Model, for which it supplies the missing grammar for the Infrastructure vertex. Technique catalog v1.0 released.

entry (phishing lure) → staging (Telegram dead drop) → payload (Vidar v2 via Xray/VLESS/REALITY) → c2 (self-signed mTLS implant)

GhostShell (MB-0009): a standalone EC-P-256 mTLS implant with per-implant client certificates and a self-named CA, tracked after publication by Zscaler ThreatLabz and the Belgian CCB. IIM techniques also carry longitudinal cases such as Gamaredon’s BITS-downloading (MB-0001) and the GIFTEDCROOK tooling evolution across UAC-0226 (MB-0004).

Dost, R. (2026). Infrastructure Intelligence Model (IIM). Malwarebox Research.
iim.malwarebox.eu
IIMQL: Infrastructure Intelligence Model Query Language
v1.0 Apache 2.0
Structural questions against IIM data, not ad hoc Python.

A query language for IIM data, drawing on Cypher's graph pattern matching and SQL's filtering, built for the IIM v1.1 data model: MATCH (e:entry)-[:download]->(s:staging)-->(p:payload)-[:connect]->(c:c2) WHERE ... RETURN ... Ships as CLI, REPL and Python API, with no runtime dependencies beyond stdlib. 25 end-to-end tests.

iimql.malwarebox.eu
SOLBIT: Deception-Aware Attribution
Model + scoring open
Attribution weighted by how hard evidence is to fake.

Six dimensions of evidence, weighted by forgeability rather than treated as equal: Technical (easiest to fake) to Infrastructure to Linguistic to Behavioral to Operational to Strategic (hardest to fake: cui bono). A divergence between surface and deep dimensions reads as a false-flag signal, not noise to discard.

ACDP: Actor-Centric Defensive Prioritization
Released Full paper available
Which control comes first, against this actor specifically.

Sits above ATT&CK, NIST CSF and FAIR: takes their output and produces a reasoned order for which control comes first, against a specific actor. Four axes (ADV, IRR, CC, DDT), weighted per actor rather than generically. A worked example against a Sandworm profile puts immutable backups in Tier 1 and awareness training in Tier 4, against that actor, not in general.

Dost, R. (2026). Actor-Centric Defensive Prioritization (ACDP). Malwarebox Research.
acdp.malwarebox.eu
Modus: Decision Fingerprinting
Unreleased
An actor's stable operational choices (registrar and TLD preference, activity windows, rotation cadence), independent of tooling rotation.
MB-RM: Malwarebox Relevance Mapper
Unreleased
Maps an organization's exposure onto actor relevance.
TRACKED CLUSTERS

Compact reference: clusters under active tracking

CLUSTER
MB-ID
ORIGIN
TARGETS
ARTICLES
Gamaredon
MB-0001
🇷🇺 Russia
🇺🇦 Ukraine
7
APT28
MB-0002
🇷🇺 Russia
🇺🇦 Ukraine, NATO/EU
1
MuddyWater
MB-0003
🇮🇷 Iran
🇮🇶🇸🇦🇦🇪🇯🇴🇹🇷🇮🇱🇩🇪🇺🇸
3
UAC-0226
MB-0004
Unknown
🇺🇦 Ukraine
2
UAC-0184
MB-0005
Unknown
🇺🇦 Ukraine
2
UAC-0244 / UAC-0247
MB-0006
Unknown
🇺🇦 Ukraine
1
GhostShell
MB-0009
Unknown
🇺🇦 Ukraine (UAV / defense supply chain)
1
APT43
MB-0010
🇰🇵 North Korea
🇰🇷🇺🇸🇯🇵🇪🇺
1
IIM FEED
feed.iim.malwarebox.eu

Frameworks in production

40
Chains
19
Actors
24
Techniques observed
12
In review
CONFIDENCE
33 confirmed 7 likely 0 tentative
422 entities 457 relations last publication 30 Aug 2026

Community-submitted chains are accepted after review. A verifiable source link is required, capped at 1,000 submissions per day.

LAST PUBLISHED CHAINS
ALL 40
MB-0001 Gamaredon confirmed

IIM chain for Sekoia.io's three-part 'FSB's matryoshka' Gamaredon series (parts 1-3, 1-4 June 2026) reconstructing a January 2026 infection chain. A weaponized xHTML lure HTML-smuggles a malicious RAR that exploits CVE-2025-8088 to drop a hidden HTA…

entry staging×4 redirector×6 c2 payload×2 c2×2
16 entities 18 relations 9 techniques observed 03 Jun 2026
APT43 confirmed

ENKI-attributed Kimsuky lane. Fake Webex page based on a legitimate meeting schedule downloads an ALZip archive containing fix-camera.jse, which drops meeting.html and mTSTCv8.mdxm/loadDll.dll. The downloader retrieves engine.dat/spyInster.dll, which installs…

entry staging×2 redirector staging×2 payload×3 c2 staging
11 entities 13 relations 2 techniques observed 30 Apr 2026
GREYVIBE likely

WithSecure-attributed GREYVIBE PhantomMail lane. April 2026 spear-phishing likely impersonated Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, delivered Google Drive-hosted RAR archives, ran TEASOUP-obfuscated JavaScript loaders,…

entry redirector staging×2 payload×2 staging c2×6
13 entities 13 relations 3 techniques observed 30 Apr 2026
unattributed confirmed

IIM chain built from the original Rapid7 report published on 2026-05-29 and included here as an accepted follow-up for the 2026-05-31 request. Rapid7 observed exploitation of CVE-2026-0257 against PAN-OS / Prisma Access GlobalProtect deployments where…

entry×4 redirector staging payload×2 c2
9 entities 9 relations 0 techniques observed 29 May 2026
unattributed confirmed

IIM chain built from an original reverse-engineering report published on 2026-05-31. The report analyzes a Mach-O universal binary associated with Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS). The sample uses a rolling XOR routine keyed by 7M43mJx9I0GwjslSA2oKSgkqsUo to hide…

entry staging payload c2×2
5 entities 4 relations 0 techniques observed 31 May 2026
unattributed confirmed in review

IIM chain for a targeted spear-phishing campaign reported via The Hacker News (Joe Security analysis) against the Punjab Safe Cities Authority and PPIC3 in Pakistan. The email used legitimate-sounding government infrastructure projects as lures and carried…

entry×2 staging payload c2
5 entities 4 relations 1 techniques observed 01 May 2026
Open Feed
IIM Workbench, a local tool for building, validating and STIX 2.1-exporting IIM chains, for anyone who wants to annotate their own.
Tracked with Kraken, our observation platform (1.0-eval "Hadal", restricted access)