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S1203 J-magic

J-magic is a custom variant of the cd00r backdoor tailored to target Juniper routers that was first observed during the J-magic Campaign in mid-2023. J-magic monitors TCP traffic for five predefined parameters or “magic packets” to be sent by the attackers before activating on compromised devices.1

Item Value
ID S1203
Associated Names
Type MALWARE
Version 1.0
Created 18 February 2025
Last Modified 15 April 2025
Navigation Layer View In ATT&CK® Navigator

Techniques Used

Domain ID Name Use
enterprise T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter -
enterprise T1059.004 Unix Shell The J-magic agent is executed through a command line argument which specifies an interface and listening port.1
enterprise T1573 Encrypted Channel -
enterprise T1573.002 Asymmetric Cryptography J-magic can communicate back to send a challenge to C2 infrastructure over SSL.1
enterprise T1070 Indicator Removal -
enterprise T1070.003 Clear Command History J-magic can overwrite previously executed command line arguments.1
enterprise T1036 Masquerading -
enterprise T1036.005 Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location J-magic can rename itself as “[nfsiod 0]” to masquerade as the local Network File System (NFS) asynchronous I/O server.1
enterprise T1040 Network Sniffing J-magic has a pcap listener function that can create an Extended Berkley Packet Filter (eBPF) on designated interfaces and ports.1
enterprise T1095 Non-Application Layer Protocol J-magic can monitor incoming C2 communications sent over TCP to the compromised host.1
enterprise T1016 System Network Configuration Discovery J-magic can compare the host and remote IPs to check if a received packet is from the infected machine.1
enterprise T1205 Traffic Signaling J-magic can monitor TCP traffic for packets containing one of five different predefined parameters and will spawn a reverse shell if one of the parameters and the proper response string to a subsequent challenge is received.1

References