threatintel
actor tracker
IOC pivot
ioc · name

vpnbridge.exe

CN · ChinaFlax Typhoonconfidence · high

SoftEther VPN bridge binary renamed by Flax Typhoon to `conhost.exe` or `dllhost.exe` to masquerade as Windows system components. Microsoft's August 2023 advisory describes this as the actor's signature persistence mechanism, used to tunnel SoftEther over HTTPS to TCP/443.

first seen
Aug 23, 2023
publisher
Microsoft Threat Intelligence
source citation