TTPwire Vol. 1 · MITRE ATT&CK·Tagged

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Huntress

How Fake OpenClaw Installers Spread GhostSocks Malware

2026-03-04 · Read original ↗

ATT&CK techniques detected

9 predictions
T1548.006TCC Manipulation
94%
"$ tmpdir ( a random location under / var / folders ), while all extended attributes are stripped from the file. this is likely in an attempt to circumvent gatekeeper controls ; however, curl will not add the com. apple. quarantine flag, which renders this largely unnecessary. exe…"
T1204.002Malicious File
92%
"log, md, text, json, env, xlsx, xls, ods, docx, png, and doc. figure 20 : applescript prompt for administrative credentials figure 21 : infostealer script executed once administrative credentials and tcc privileges have been provided once the filegrabber method has captured the t…"
T1027.002Software Packing
85%
"and their associated indicators are included in the indicators of compromise section at the bottom of this blog. however, some notable binaries were named cloudvideo. exe, svc _ service. exe, and serverdrive. exe. cloudvideo. exe is a vidar stealer payload that reaches out to bot…"
T1195.001Compromise Software Dependencies and Development Tools
80%
", promoting a different github repository openclaw - trading - assistant, under the organisation molt - bot. this issue was closed shortly after to remove traces of self - promotion, and an identical issue was raised before a member of openclaw closed it off as spam. figures 6 : …"
T1204.002Malicious File
69%
"openclaw - installer source within the releases section, the malicious executable can be found named openclaw _ x64. exe inside of a 7 - zip archive. this is a bloated binary that had the original name tradeai. exe. a search for similar files on virustotal revealed three other sa…"
T1204.002Malicious File
60%
"##aw to trick unsuspecting users into installing malware on their machines. on monday, february 9, huntress was alerted to a system showing signs of infection after a user downloaded and ran an installer from github posing as an openclaw installer for windows. this came as the to…"
T1055.001Dynamic-link Library Injection
57%
"openclaw - installer source within the releases section, the malicious executable can be found named openclaw _ x64. exe inside of a 7 - zip archive. this is a bloated binary that had the original name tradeai. exe. a search for similar files on virustotal revealed three other sa…"
T1588.002Tool
35%
"the code in the repository. background much like the aliens from toy story who worshipped a claw, openclaw is taking the world by storm and developing a lot of followers. after originally being released as clawdbot in november of 2025, promising to be a personal open - source ai …"
T1027.002Software Packing
30%
"packer is a new packer that injects malware into memory, adds firewall rules, creates hidden ghost scheduled tasks, and performs potential antivm checks for mouse movement before running decrypted payloads. - ghostsocks, a tool previously utilized by the blackbasta ransomware gro…"

Summary

Huntress warns of fake OpenClaw installers on GitHub deploying malware. Learn how these attacks happen, identify signs of infection, and stay protected.