MALWARE FAMILY

Kaiten

Internal ID: elf.kaiten

aliases

Last seen:Mar 17, 2026

Intelligence Profile

According to netenrich, Kaiten is a Trojan horse that opens a back door on the compromised computer that allows it to perform other malicious activities. The trojan does not create any copies of itself. This Backdoor arrives on a system as a file dropped by other malware or as a file downloaded unknowingly by users when visiting malicious sites.

Threat Analysis

Kaiten is a malware family tracked by threat intelligence researchers and catalogued in the Malpedia dataset. It represents a distinct malicious software lineage with identifiable code characteristics, behaviors, and victimology.

External References

→https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/apache-log4j-zero-day

→https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/kaiten-std-router-ddos-malware-threat-advisory.pdf

→https://www.blackarrow.net/attackers-abuse-mobileirons-rce-to-deliver-kaiten/

→https://www.lacework.com/blog/the-kek-security-network/

→https://www.lacework.com/the-kek-security-network/

→https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/20/i/exposed-docker-server-abused-to-drop-cryptominer-ddos-bot-.html

Quick Facts

TypeMalware Family

Aliases1

Also Known As

elf.kaiten

Research Links

MITRE ATT&CK VirusTotal Google (news) Twitter/X search

Data sourced from Malpedia, Ransomware.live, RansomLook, and CTIWATCH OSINT collection. Actor attribution is based on available intelligence and may be incomplete.

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