1200kmSECURITY RESEARCH

1200KM / sigma-rule

Potential Homoglyph Attack Using Lookalike Characters in Filename — Sigma Rule

Sigma rule 4f1707b1-b50b-45b4-b5a2-3978b5a5d0d6. Potential Homoglyph Attack Using Lookalike Characters in Filename — Sigma Rule. Detects the presence of unicode characters which are homoglyphs, or identical in appearance, to ASCII letter characters. This is used as an obfuscation and masquerading techniques. Only "perfect" homoglyphs are included; these are characters that are indistinguishable from ASCII characters and thus may make excellent candidates for homoglyph attack characters.

Rule metadata and linked tags

Author: Micah Babinski, @micahbabinski. Source status: test; severity: medium. Source dates: 2023-05-08 / not supplied.

{
  "category": "file_event",
  "product": "windows"
}

Pinned original Sigma rule · Detection Rule License 1.1

Source SHA-256: c0e0bf44b9f4162084678f3047b32b207bd0a45d0ab188936b58baddba603be4

Detection logic

Original source YAML. Source-tag agreement is not proof of complete semantic coverage. This rule has not been compiled for a SIEM backend or validated against live telemetry here.

title: Potential Homoglyph Attack Using Lookalike Characters in Filename
id: 4f1707b1-b50b-45b4-b5a2-3978b5a5d0d6
status: test
description: |
    Detects the presence of unicode characters which are homoglyphs, or identical in appearance, to ASCII letter characters.
    This is used as an obfuscation and masquerading techniques. Only "perfect" homoglyphs are included; these are characters that
    are indistinguishable from ASCII characters and thus may make excellent candidates for homoglyph attack characters.
references:
    - https://redcanary.com/threat-detection-report/threats/socgholish/#threat-socgholish
    - http://www.irongeek.com/homoglyph-attack-generator.php
author: Micah Babinski, @micahbabinski
date: 2023-05-08
tags:
    - attack.stealth
    - attack.t1036
    - attack.t1036.003
logsource:
    category: file_event
    product: windows
detection:
    selection_upper:
        TargetFilename|contains:
            - "\u0410" # А/A
            - "\u0412" # В/B
            - "\u0415" # Е/E
            - "\u041a" # К/K
            - "\u041c" # М/M
            - "\u041d" # Н/H
            - "\u041e" # О/O
            - "\u0420" # Р/P
            - "\u0421" # С/C
            - "\u0422" # Т/T
            - "\u0425" # Х/X
            - "\u0405" # Ѕ/S
            - "\u0406" # І/I
            - "\u0408" # Ј/J
            - "\u04ae" # Ү/Y
            - "\u04c0" # Ӏ/I
            - "\u050C" # Ԍ/G
            - "\u051a" # Ԛ/Q
            - "\u051c" # Ԝ/W
            - "\u0391" # Α/A
            - "\u0392" # Β/B
            - "\u0395" # Ε/E
            - "\u0396" # Ζ/Z
            - "\u0397" # Η/H
            - "\u0399" # Ι/I
            - "\u039a" # Κ/K
            - "\u039c" # Μ/M
            - "\u039d" # Ν/N
            - "\u039f" # Ο/O
            - "\u03a1" # Ρ/P
            - "\u03a4" # Τ/T
            - "\u03a5" # Υ/Y
            - "\u03a7" # Χ/X
    selection_lower:
        TargetFilename|contains:
            - "\u0430" # а/a
            - "\u0435" # е/e
            - "\u043e" # о/o
            - "\u0440" # р/p
            - "\u0441" # с/c
            - "\u0445" # х/x
            - "\u0455" # ѕ/s
            - "\u0456" # і/i
            - "\u04cf" # ӏ/l
            - "\u0458" # ј/j
            - "\u04bb" # һ/h
            - "\u0501" # ԁ/d
            - "\u051b" # ԛ/q
            - "\u051d" # ԝ/w
            - "\u03bf" # ο/o
    condition: 1 of selection_*
falsepositives:
    - File names with legitimate Cyrillic text. Will likely require tuning (or not be usable) in countries where these alphabets are in use.
level: medium

Original YAML and metadata in JSON

False positives

  • File names with legitimate Cyrillic text. Will likely require tuning (or not be usable) in countries where these alphabets are in use.

Source references

Connected ecosystem references

Exact source-tagged techniques

Telemetry review

Read the original logsource above, then inspect the linked detection workspaces for technique-level sensor context. No per-rule telemetry equivalence is inferred.

Pinned research references. No browser attack runner, live simulation result or validated detector is asserted. Source mappings and validation limits are preserved. ATT&CK / Atomic provenance · Detection provenance.