HOMETHREATSGoldMax
MALWARE FAMILY

GoldMax

Internal ID: win.goldmax
1
aliases
Last seen:Mar 17, 2026

Intelligence Profile

Gold Max is a Golang written command and control backdoor used by the NOBELIUM threat actor group. It uses several different techniques to obfuscate its actions and evade detection. The malware writes an encrypted configuration file to disk, where the file name and AES-256 cipher keys are unique per implant and based on environmental variables and information about the network where it is running.

Threat Analysis

GoldMax 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://ics-cert.kaspersky.com/media/Kaspersky-ICS-CERT-APT-attacks-on-industrial-organizations-in-H1-2021-En.pdf
→https://securelist.com/extracting-type-information-from-go-binaries/104715/
→https://securelist.com/it-threat-evolution-q2-2023/110355/
→https://securelist.com/tomiris-called-they-want-their-turla-malware-back/109552/
→https://umbrella.cisco.com/blog/cybersecurity-threat-spotlight-backdoors-rats-loaders-evasion-techniques
→https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/analysis-reports/ar21-105a
→https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-110a
→https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/sites/default/files/publications/AA22-110A_Joint_CSA_Russian_State-Sponsored_and_Criminal_Cyber_Threats_to_Critical_Infrastructure_4_20_22_Final.pdf
→https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/observations-from-the-stellarparticle-campaign/
→https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/03/04/goldmax-goldfinder-sibot-analyzing-nobelium-malware/

Quick Facts

TypeMalware Family
Aliases1

Also Known As

win.goldmax

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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