Since February 2026, the XLAB large-scale network threat perception system has detected a new malware family active in cyberspace that adopts a Loader + Core (two-stage loading) architecture. Currently, the family has spawned multiple variants, with the main core functionality being the execution of large-scale Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. It also possesses strong cross-platform adaptability and continuous evolution capabilities.
Although the family's current activity level and influence in DDoS attacks are not yet comparable to some mainstream botnets, its speed of technological evolution deserves significant attention. Research has found that the family is undergoing a comprehensive technological transition from C to Rust, and its anti-defense and traffic encryption techniques are also iterating rapidly. Based on the shift of its technology stack from C to Rust and the characteristic of early core payloads encrypting three duckdns C2 domains, we have named it
RustDuck.
In terms of sample propagation, the spread chain of this family mainly covers IoT devices, web applications, and enterprise infrastructure. The attack methods primarily involve weak password brute-forcing (Telnet/SSH) and the exploitation of various RCE vulnerabilities, including device vulnerabilities in Android ADB, TVT API, Ruijie, TP-Link, ZTE, and others, as well as web/component vulnerabilities such as ThinkPHP, Jenkins, YARN. It also combines several historical CVEs (CVE-2025-29635, CVE-2017-17215, CVE-2018-8007, CVE-2024-1781) to expand the attack surface. Overall, it presents a combined propagation characteristic of "weak passwords + IoT vulnerabilities + Web RCE", capable of covering routers, cameras, Android terminals, and server environments, enabling large-scale automated intrusion and payload delivery. Currently, over 20 IPs have been observed participating in spreading the RustDuck botnet, with the most active implant source IP being:
176.65.139[.]204