STOMP 2 DIS: Brilliance in the (Visual) Basics

Throughout January 2020, FireEye has continued to observe multiple targeted phishing campaigns designed to download and deploy a backdoor we track as MINEBRIDGE. The campaigns primarily targeted financial services organizations in the United States, though targeting is likely more widespread than...

FIDL: FLARE’s IDA Decompiler Library

IDA Pro and the Hex Rays decompiler are a core part of any toolkit for reverse engineering and vulnerability research. In a previous blog post we discussed how the Hex-Rays API can be used to solve small, well-defined problems commonly seen as part of malware analysis. Having access to a...

Definitive Dossier of Devilish Debug Details – Part Deux: A Didactic Deep Dive into Data Driven Deductions

In Part One of this blog series, Steve Miller outlined what PDB paths are, how they appear in malware, how we use them to detect malicious files, and how we sometimes use them to make associations about groups and actors. As Steve continued his research into PDB paths, we became interested in...

Head Fake: Tackling Disruptive Ransomware Attacks

Within the past several months, FireEye has observed financially-motivated threat actors employ tactics that focus on disrupting business processes by deploying ransomware in mass throughout a victim’s environment. Understanding that normal business processes are critical to organizational succes...

CARBANAK Week Part Four: The CARBANAK Desktop Video Player

Part One, Part Two and Part Three of CARBANAK Week are behind us. In this final blog post, we dive into one of the more interesting tools that is part of the CARBANAK toolset. The CARBANAK authors wrote their own video player and we happened to come across an interesting video capture from CARBAN...

Churning Out Machine Learning Models: Handling Changes in Model Predictions

Introduction Machine learning ML is playing an increasingly important role in cyber security. Here at FireEye, we employ ML for a variety of tasks such as: antivirus, malicious PowerShell detection, and correlating threat actor behavior. While many people think that a data scientist’s job is...

FLARE Script Series: Automating Objective-C Code Analysis with Emulation

This blog post is the next episode in the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE team Script Series. Today, we are sharing a new IDAPython library – flare-emu – powered by IDA Pro and the Unicorn emulation framework that provides scriptable emulation features for the x86, x8664, ARM, and...

rVMI: Perform Full System Analysis with Ease

Manual dynamic analysis is an important concept. It enables us to observe the behavior of a sophisticated malware sample or exploit by executing it in a controlled environment. The information gathered through this process is often crucial in gaining a full understanding of a sample. When...

Writing a libemu/Unicorn Compatability Layer

In this post we are going to take a quick look at what it takes to write a libemu compatibility layer for the Unicorn engine. In the course of this work, we will also import the libemu Win32 environment to run under Unicorn. For a bit of background, libemu is a lightweight x86 emulator written in...

IRONGATE ICS Malware: Nothing to See Here...Masking Malicious Activity on SCADA Systems

In the latter half of 2015, the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE team identified several versions of an ICS-focused malware crafted to manipulate a specific industrial process running within a simulated Siemens control system environment. We named this family of malware IRONGATE...

Ransomware Activity Spikes in March, Steadily increasing throughout 2016

UPDATE June 15, 2016: This post has been updated to include new data on ransomware activity, which is also now broken down by region. Cyber extortion for financial gain is typically carried out in one of two ways. The first method is a business disruption attack – a category we discussed at lengt...

The Dangers of Downloads: Securing Mobile Devices in 2016

In 2015, mobile malware attacks were on the rise; from 2014 to 2015 we saw an increase of 61% in the number of these attacks. Malware has a clear progression path; it starts out targeting unsuspecting users who are likely to open unknown attachments or install unknown applications. The primary...

General Michael Hayden Talks about the Future of Cybersecurity at MIRcon 2013

When you've got some of the cybersecurity industry's best and brightest practitioners in one room, just how do you top the conversations they're having across the breakfast table? By getting one of the foremost experts on cybersecurity to deliver a top notch speech on the future of the industry,...

COOKIEJAR: Tracking Adversaries With FireEye Endpoint Security’s Logon Tracker Module

During a recent investigation at a telecommunications company led by Mandiant Managed Defense, our team was tasked with rapidly identifying systems that had been accessed by a threat actor using legitimate, but compromised domain credentials. This sometimes-challenging task was made simple becaus...

Attention is All They Need: Combatting Social Media Information Operations With Neural Language Models

Information operations have flourished on social media in part because they can be conducted cheaply, are relatively low risk, have immediate global reach, and can exploit the type of viral amplification incentivized by platforms. Using networks of coordinated accounts, social media-driven...

SANNY Malware Delivery Method Updated in Recently Observed Attacks

Introduction In the third week of March 2018, through FireEye’s Dynamic Threat Intelligence, FireEye discovered malicious macro-based Microsoft Word documents distributing SANNY malware to multiple governments worldwide. Each malicious document lure was crafted in regard to relevant regional...

BACKSWING - Pulling a BADRABBIT Out of a Hat

Executive Summary On Oct. 24, 2017, coordinated strategic web compromises started to distribute BADRABBIT ransomware to unwitting users. FireEye appliances detected the download attempts and blocked our user base from infection. During our investigation into the activity, FireEye identified a...

Introducing Monitor.app for macOS

UPDATE 2 Oct. 24, 2018: Monitor.app now supports macOS 10.14. UPDATE April 4, 2018: Monitor.app now supports macOS 10.13. As a malware analyst or systems programmer, having a suite of solid dynamic analysis tools is vital to being quick and effective. These tools enable us to understand malware...

AntiVirus Evasion Reconstructed – Veil 3.0

The Veil Framework is a collection of tools designed for use during offensive security testing. When the time calls for it, Mandiant’s Red Team will use the Veil-Framework to help achieve their objective. The most commonly used tool is Veil-Evasion, which can turn an arbitrary script or piece of...

FireEye Responds to Wave of Destructive Cyber Attacks in Gulf Region

In 2012, a suspected Iranian hacker group called the “Cutting Sword of Justice” used malware known as Shamoon – or Disttrack. In mid-November, Mandiant, a FireEye company, responded to the first Shamoon 2.0 incident against an organization located in the Gulf states. Since then, Mandiant has...

‘One-Stop Shop’ – Phishing Domain Targets Information from Customers of Several Indian Banks

FireEye Labs recently discovered a malicious phishing domain designed to steal a variety of information – including credentials and mobile numbers – from customers of several banks in India. Currently, we have not observed this domain being used in any campaigns. The phishing websites appear to b...

Extending Linux Executable Logging With The Integrity Measurement Architecture

Gaining insight into the files being executed on your system is a great first step towards improved visibility on your endpoints. Taking this a step further, centrally storing logs of file execution data so they can be used for detection and hunting provides an excellent opportunity to find evil ...

Unsealing the Deal: Cyber Threats to Mergers and Acquisitions Persist in a Hot Market

Risks Posed by Sensitive Corporate Communications, Broadened Attack Surface In 2015, a record $5 trillion dollars was tied up in mergers and acquisitions M&A deals, according to JP Morgan. So far, mega deals in 2016 include Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn, Shire’s acquisition of Baxalta, and...

Locky Gets Clever!

As discussed in an earlier FireEye blog, we have seen Locky ransomware rise to fame in recent months. Locky is aggressively distributed via a JavaScript-based downloader sent as an attachment in spam emails, and may have overshadowed the Dridex banking Trojan as the top spam contributor. FireEye...

Surge in Spam Campaign Delivering Locky Ransomware Downloaders

FireEye Labs is detecting a significant spike in Locky ransomware downloaders due to a pair of concurrent email spam campaigns impacting users in over 50 countries. Some of the top affected countries are depicted in Figure 1. Figure 1. Affected countries As seen in Figure 2, the steep spike start...

SlemBunk Part II: Prolonged Attack Chain and Better-Organized Campaign

Introduction Our follow-up investigation of a nasty Android banking malware we identified at the tail end of last year has not only revealed that the trojan is more persistent than we initially realized – thus making for a much more dangerous threat – but that it is also being used as part of an...

Kerberos Tickets on Linux Red Teams

At FireEye Mandiant, we conduct numerous red team engagements within Windows Active Directory environments. Consequently, we frequently encounter Linux systems integrated within Active Directory environments. Compromising an individual domain-joined Linux system can provide useful data on its own...

Network of Social Media Accounts Impersonates U.S. Political Candidates, Leverages U.S. and Israeli Media in Support of Iranian Interests

In August 2018, FireEye Threat Intelligence released a report exposing what we assessed to be an Iranian influence operation leveraging networks of inauthentic news sites and social media accounts aimed at audiences around the world. We identified inauthentic social media accounts posing as...

Dissecting a NETWIRE Phishing Campaign's Usage of Process Hollowing

Introduction Malware authors attempt to evade detection by executing their payload without having to write the executable file on the disk. One of the most commonly seen techniques of this "fileless" execution is code injection. Rather than executing the malware directly, attackers inject the...

Bypassing Antivirus for Your Antivirus Bypass

Chances are you have heard about how easy it can be to evade antivirus. Often, this is because the signatures used by vendors are too simplistic and can be successfully duped without changing the functionality of the malware. Have you ever attempted to evade AV? Is it really that easy? In this bl...

Remote Authentication GeoFeasibility Tool - GeoLogonalyzer

Users have long needed to access important resources such as virtual private networks VPNs, web applications, and mail servers from anywhere in the world at any time. While the ability to access resources from anywhere is imperative for employees, threat actors often leverage stolen credentials t...

Why Is North Korea So Interested in Bitcoin?

In 2016 we began observing actors we believe to be North Korean utilizing their intrusion capabilities to conduct cyber crime, targeting banks and the global financial system. This marked a departure from previously observed activity of North Korean actors employing cyber espionage for traditiona...

Monitoring Windows Console Activity (Part 2)

This is the second of two blogs that discuss the implementation of the Windows console architecture from years past, with a primary focus on the current implementation present on modern versions of Windows. Read our first blog, "Monitoring Windows Console Activity Part 1," for more. Capturing the...

Introducing Linux Support for FakeNet-NG: FLARE’s Next Generation Dynamic Network Analysis Tool

Introduction In 2016, FLARE introduced FakeNet-NG, an open-source network analysis tool written in Python. FakeNet-NG allows security analysts to observe and interact with network applications using standard or custom protocols on a single Windows host, which is especially useful for malware...

Writing a libemu/Unicorn Compatability Layer

In this post we are going to take a quick look at what it takes to write a libemu compatibility layer for the Unicorn engine. In the course of this work, we will also import the libemu Win32 environment to run under Unicorn. For a bit of background, libemu is a lightweight x86 emulator written in...

What About the Plant Floor? Six Subversive Concerns for ICS Environments

Industrial enterprises such as electric utilities, petroleum companies, and manufacturing organizations invest heavily in industrial control systems ICS to efficiently, reliably, and safely operate industrial processes. Without this technology operating the plant floor, these businesses cannot...

Using the Registry to Discover Unix Systems and Jump Boxes

On red team engagements, Mandiant consultants are often tasked with identifying and obtaining access to critical Unix systems within our client’s environments. The objectives may include obtaining payment card data on point of sale terminals or accessing intellectual property residing on Apple...

FIN7 Spear Phishing Campaign Targets Personnel Involved in SEC Filings

In late February 2017, FireEye as a Service FaaS identified a spear phishing campaign that appeared to be targeting personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission SEC filings at various organizations. Based on multiple identified overlaps in infrastructure and the use of...

Operations of a Brazilian Payment Card Fraud Group

Introduction Brazil has been designated a major hub for financially motivated eCrime threat activity. Brazilian threat actors are targeting domestic and foreign entities and individuals, with frequent targeting of U.S. assets. The country routinely places in "Top Five" lists of various global cyb...

Announcing the Third Annual Flare-On Challenge

Let fall be the season for reverse engineering! On Sept. 23, 2016, the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE team will be hosting its third annual Flare-On reverse engineering contest with a designated start time of 8pm ET. This is a CTF-style challenge for all active and aspiring rever...

Red Team Tool Roundup

In many cases Red Team tools are not written because someone feels like writing a tool, or wakes up one morning thinking, “I want to write a tool today”. Red Teamers generally identify tedious tasks in their methodology and then create tools that automate these tasks for current and future...

A Growing Number of Android Malware Families Believed to Have a Common Origin: A Study Based on Binary Code

Introduction On Feb. 19, IBM XForce researchers released an intelligence report 1 stating that the source code for GM Bot was leaked to a crimeware forum in December 2015. GM Bot is a sophisticated Android malware family that emerged in the Russian-speaking cybercrime underground in late 2014. IB...

Critical Infrastructure Beyond the Power Grid

The term "critical infrastructure" has earned its spot on the board of our ongoing game of cyber bingo--right next to "Digital Pearl Harbor," "Cyber 9/11," "SCADA" and "Stuxnet." With "critical infrastructure" thrown about in references to cyber threats nearly every week, we thought it was time f...

That’s a Wrap! Highlights from MIRcon 2012

Three years ago when we set out to create a conference that would bring together the greatest minds in the information security industry, we could not imagine the overwhelmingly positive response and growth MIRcon™ would receive year after year. Our goal for MIRcon is simple: to inform innovators...

"Distinguished Impersonator" Information Operation That Previously Impersonated U.S. Politicians and Journalists on Social Media Leverages Fabricated U.S. Liberal Personas to Promote Iranian Interests

In May 2019, FireEye Threat Intelligence published a blog post exposing a network of English-language social media accounts that engaged in inauthentic behavior and misrepresentation that we assessed with low confidence was organized in support of Iranian political interests. Personas in that...

Excelerating Analysis – Tips and Tricks to Analyze Data with Microsoft Excel

Incident response investigations don’t always involve standard host-based artifacts with fully developed parsing and analysis tools. At FireEye Mandiant, we frequently encounter incidents that involve a number of systems and solutions that utilize custom logging or artifact data. Determining what...

Healthcare: Research Data and PII Continuously Targeted by Multiple Threat Actors

The healthcare industry faces a range of threat groups and malicious activity. Given the critical role that healthcare plays within society and its relationship with our most sensitive information, the risk to this sector is especially consequential. It may also be one of the major reasons why we...

New FakeNet-NG Feature: Content-Based Protocol Detection

I Matthew Haigh recently contributed to FLARE’s FakeNet-NG network simulator by adding content-based protocol detection and configuration. This feature is useful for analyzing malware that uses a protocol over a non-standard port; for example, HTTP over port 81. The new feature also detects and...

Why Is North Korea So Interested in Bitcoin?

In 2016 we began observing actors we believe to be North Korean utilizing their intrusion capabilities to conduct cyber crime, targeting banks and the global financial system. This marked a departure from previously observed activity of North Korean actors employing cyber espionage for traditiona...

Dridex and Locky Return Via PDF Attachments in Latest Campaigns

Dridex and Locky, two prolific malware families that made waves in 2016 after being distributed in several high-volume spam campaigns, have returned after a brief hiatus. FireEye observed a decline in the volume of Dridex and Locky in the latter half of 2016, but we recently observed two new larg...