MALWARE FAMILY

Lemon Duck

Internal ID: win.lemonduck

aliases

Last seen:Mar 17, 2026

Intelligence Profile

Lemon Duck is a monerocrypto-mining malware with capabilitiy to spread rapidly across the entire network. The malware runs its payload mainly in memory. Internal network spreading is performed by SMB RCE Vulnerability (CVE-2017-0144), or brute-force attacks.

Threat Analysis

Lemon Duck 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://asec.ahnlab.com/en/31811/

→https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2021/05/lemon-duck-spreads-wings.html

→https://cybotsai.com/lemon-duck-attack/

→https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2019/10/01/lemon_duck-powershell-malware-cryptojacks-enterprise-networks/

→https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/05/07/new-lemon-duck-variants-exploiting-microsoft-exchange-server/?cmp=30728

→https://notes.netbytesec.com/2021/06/lemon-duck-cryptominer-technical.html

→https://success.trendmicro.com/solution/000261916

→https://therecord.media/lemonduck-botnet-evolves-to-allow-hands-on-keyboard-intrusions/

→https://www.bitdefender.com/files/News/CaseStudies/study/373/Bitdefender-PR-Whitepaper-LemonDuck-creat4826-en-EN-GenericUse.pdf

→https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/vulnerable-microsoft-sql-servers-targeted-with-cobalt-strike/

Quick Facts

TypeMalware Family

Aliases1

Also Known As

win.lemonduck

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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