Spartacus ransomware: introduction to a strain of unsophisticated malware

Spartacus ransomware is a new sample that has been circulating in 2018. Written in C, the original sample is obfuscated, which we will go over as we extract it to its readable state. Spartacus is a relatively straight-forward ransomware sample and uses some similar techniques and code to others w...

Malware monitor - leveraging PyREBox for malware analysis

This post was authored by Xabier Ugarte Pedrero In July 2017 we released PyREBox, a Python Scriptable Reverse Engineering Sandbox as an open source tool. This project is part of our continuous effort to create new tools to improve our workflows. PyREBox is a versatile instrumentation framework...

Encryption 101: decryption tool code walkthrough

We have reached the final installment of our Encryption 101 series. In the prior post, we walked through, in detail, the thought process while looking at the Princess Locker ransomware. We talked about the specific ways to narrow down the analysis toward the encryption portions, the weaknesses in...

North Korean Malicious Cyber Activity

The Department of Homeland Security DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have identified Trojan malware variants—referred to as SHARPKNOT—used by the North Korean government. The U.S. Government refers to malicious cyber activity by the North Korean government as HIDDEN COBRA...

Encryption 101: Decryptor’s thought process

In the previous parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, we covered the basics of encryption, walked through a live example of a ransomware in detail, and talked about encryption weaknesses. In this part of the encryption 101 series, we will begin wrapping it up by going into detail on a ransomware with...

Avzhan DDoS bot dropped by Chinese drive-by attack

The Avzhan DDoS bot has been known since 2010, but recently we saw it in wild again, being dropped by a Chinese drive-by attack. In this post, we'll take a deep dive into its functionality and compare the sample we captured with the one described in the past. Analyzed sample...

Securing Our Connected Car Future with Panasonic

There are few more exciting frontiers of the Internet of Things IoT than connected cars. Gartner predicts that there will be 61 million vehicles with built-in connectivity on our roads by 2020. But as we drive ever closer to a future where autonomous vehicles are a commonplace sight, we must be...

Securing Our Connected Car Future with Panasonic

There are few more exciting frontiers of the Internet of Things IoT than connected cars. Gartner predicts that there will be 61 million vehicles with built-in connectivity on our roads by 2020. But as we drive ever closer to a future where autonomous vehicles are a commonplace sight, we must be...

SA163: OpenSSH Vulnerability October 2017

SUMMARY Symantec Network Protection products using affected versions of OpenSSH are susceptible to a security vulnerability. A remote attacker with read-only access to an SFTP server can create a large number of zero-length files and deplete the target's hard disk space. AFFECTED PRODUCTS The...

The Botconf Experience

By Yohai Einav, Amir Asiaee, Ali Fakiri-Tabrizi and Alexey Sarychev Originally Posted on January 4, 2018 Earlier this month we took our show on the road, presenting some of our team's work at the Botconf conference in beautiful Montpellier, France. We could talk here for hours about the food, win...

A coin miner with a “Heaven’s Gate”

You might call the last two years the years of ransomware. Ransomware was, without a doubt, the most popular type of malware. But at the end of last year, we started observing that ransomware was losing its popularity to coin miners. It is very much possible that this trend will grow as 2018...

SA159: OpenSSL Vulnerabilities 7-Dec-2017

SUMMARY Symantec Network Protection products using affected versions of OpenSSL are susceptible to two security vulnerabilities. A remote attacker can obtain Diffie-Hellman private key information and sensitive information accidentally transmitted in plaintext over an SSL/TLS connection. AFFECTED...

SA161: Local Information Disclosure Due to Meltdown and Spectre Attacks

SUMMARY Symantec Network Protection products, which run on an affected CPU chipset and execute arbitrary code from external sources, are susceptible to several information disclosure vulnerabilities aka Meltdown and Spectre attacks. A remote attacker, with the ability to execute arbitrary code...

Multiple CPU Hardware CVE-2017-5754 Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Description Multiple CPU Hardware are prone to an information-disclosure vulnerability. Attackers can exploit this issue to obtain sensitive information that may aid in further attacks. Technologies Affected Apple Mac Os X 10.11.6 Apple iOS 11.2 Apple macOS 10.12.6 Apple macOS 10.13.2 Apple tvOS...

North Korean Malicious Cyber Activity

The Department of Homeland Security DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have identified Trojan malware variants—referred to as BANKSHOT—used by the North Korean government. The U.S. Government refers to malicious cyber activity by the North Korean government as HIDDEN COBRA. US-CERT...

Akamai, Mirai, & The FBI

Through the end of 2016, and throughout 2017, multiple Mirai-based botnets targeted multiple Akamai customers. The very first Mirai attack against Akamai was a multi-day barrage, weighing in at a peak of 620/Gbps that sent shockwaves across the Internet. The same botnet would go on to conduct...

SA157: OpenSSL Vulnerabilities 28-Aug-2017 and 2-Nov-2017

SUMMARY Symantec Network Protection products using affected versions of OpenSSL are susceptible to several vulnerabilities. A remote attacker can send a crafted X.509 certificate to cause unspecified impact. They can exploit, under certain circumstances, a computational flaw in the Montgomery...

PortEx - Java library to analyse Portable Executable files with a special focus on malware analysis and PE malformation robustness

PortEx is a Java library for static malware analysis of Portable Executable files. Its focus is on PE malformation robustness, and anomaly detection. PortEx is written in Java and Scala, and targeted at Java applications. Features Reading header information from: MSDOS Header, COFF File Header,...

How to solve the Malwarebytes CrackMe: a step-by-step tutorial

The topic of this post is a Malwarebytes CrackMe—an exercise in malware analysis that I recently created. First, the challenge was created to serve internal purposes, but then it was released to the community on Twitter and triggered a lot of positive response. Thanks to all of you who sent in yo...

Analyzing malware by API calls

Over the last quarter, we've seen an increase in malware using packers, crypters, and protectors—all methods used to obfuscate malicious code from systems or programs attempting to identify it. These packers make it very hard, or next to impossible to perform static analysis. The growing number o...