Loading Kernel Shellcode

In the wake of recent hacking tool dumps, the FLARE team saw a spike in malware samples detonating kernel shellcode. Although most samples can be analyzed statically, the FLARE team sometimes debugs these samples to confirm specific functionality. Debugging can be an efficient way to get around...

2016 Flare-On Challenge Solutions

I would like to thank the challenge authors this year: 1. Alexander Rich 2. Matt Williams @0xmwilliams 3. Dominik Weber 4. James T. Bennett @jtbennettjr 5. Tyler Dean 6. Josh Homan 7. Alex Berry 8. Nick Harbour @nickharbour 9. Jon Erickson @2130706433 10. FireEye Labs Advanced Vulnerability...

Increased Use of WMI for Environment Detection and Evasion

Introduction Throughout the past few months, FireEye Labs has observed an increased use of Windows Management Instrumentation WMI queries for environment detection and evasion of dynamic analysis and virtualization engines. WMI provides high-level interaction with Windows objects using C/C++,...

Cerber: Analyzing a Ransomware Attack Methodology To Enable Protection

Ransomware is a common method of cyber extortion for financial gain that typically involves users being unable to interact with their files, applications or systems until a ransom is paid. Accessibility of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin has directly contributed to this ransomware model. Based on...

RuMMS: The Latest Family of Android Malware Attacking Users in Russia Via SMS Phishing

Introduction Recently we observed an Android malware family being used to attack users in Russia. The malware samples were mainly distributed through a series of malicious subdomains registered under a legitimate domain belonging to a well-known shared hosting service provider in Russia. Because...

Shikata Ga Nai Encoder Still Going Strong

One of the most popular exploit frameworks in the world is Metasploit. Its vast library of pocket exploits, pluggable payload environment, and simplicity of execution makes it the de facto base platform. Metasploit is used by pentesters, security enthusiasts, script kiddies, and even malicious...

ICS Tactical Security Trends: Analysis of the Most Frequent Security Risks Observed in the Field

Introduction FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence compiled extensive data from dozens of ICS security health assessment engagements ICS Healthcheck performed by Mandiant, FireEye's consulting team, to identify the most pervasive and highest priority security risks in industrial facilities. The information...

M-Trends 2017: A View From the Front Lines

Every year Mandiant responds to a large number of cyber attacks, and 2016 was no exception. For our M-Trends 2017 report, we took a look at the incidents we investigated last year and provided a global and regional the Americas, APAC and EMEA analysis focused on attack trends, and defensive and...

APT28: At the Center of the Storm

On Jan. 6, 2017, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence released its Intelligence Community Assessment: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. Still, questions persist about Russian involvement. Did the Russian government direct the group responsible for the...

Vietnamese Threat Actors APT32 Targeting Wuhan Government and Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management in Latest Example of COVID-19 Related Espionage

From at least January to April 2020, suspected Vietnamese actors APT32 carried out intrusion campaigns against Chinese targets that Mandiant Threat Intelligence believes was designed to collect intelligence on the COVID-19 crisis. Spear phishing messages were sent by the actor to China's Ministry...

APT41: A Dual Espionage and Cyber Crime Operation

Today, FireEye Intelligence is releasing a comprehensive report detailing APT41, a prolific Chinese cyber threat group that carries out state-sponsored espionage activity in parallel with financially motivated operations. APT41 is unique among tracked China-based actors in that it leverages...

Breaking the Bank: Weakness in Financial AI Applications

Currently, threat actors possess limited access to the technology required to conduct disruptive operations against financial artificial intelligence AI systems and the risk of this targeting type remains low. However, there is a high risk of threat actors leveraging AI as part of disinformation...

FIN7 Evolution and the Phishing LNK

FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been associated with malicious operations dating back to late 2015. FIN7 is referred to by many vendors as “Carbanak Group”, although we do not equate all usage of the CARBANAK backdoor with FIN7. FireEye recently observed a FIN7 spear phishin...

Resurrection of the Evil Miner

At FireEye Labs, we recently detected the resurgence of a coin mining campaign with a novel and unconventional infection vector in the form of an iFRAME inline frame – an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a web page that allows users to get content from another separate sourc...

SCANdalous! (External Detection Using Network Scan Data and Automation)

Real Quick In case you’re thrown by that fantastic title, our lawyers made us change the name of this project so we wouldn’t get sued. SCANdalous—a.k.a. Scannah Montana a.k.a. Scanny McScanface a.k.a. “Scan I Kick It? Yes You Scan”—had another name before today that, for legal reasons, we’re...

Ransomware Protection and Containment Strategies: Practical Guidance for Endpoint Protection, Hardening, and Containment

UPDATE Oct. 30, 2020: We have updated the report to include additional protection and containment strategies based on front-line visibility and response efforts in combating ransomware. While the full scope of recommendations included within the initial report remain unchanged, the following...

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...

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...

Wiping Out a Malicious Campaign Abusing Chinese Ad Platform

At FireEye Labs, we have discovered another well-crafted malvertising campaign that uses the ad API of one of the world’s largest search engines: China-based Baidu. The attacker employs a simple HTML redirector instead of shellcode or an exploit in an apparently benign-looking website. This leads...

Hunting COM Objects

COM objects have recently been used by penetration testers, Red Teams, and malicious actors to perform lateral movement. COM objects were studied by several other researchers in the past, including Matt Nelson enigma0x3, who published a blog post about it in 2017. Some of these COM objects were...

FLASHMINGO: The FireEye Open Source Automatic Analysis Tool for Flash

Adobe Flash is one of the most exploited software components of the last decade. Its complexity and ubiquity make it an obvious target for attackers. Public sources list more than one thousand CVEs being assigned to the Flash Player alone since 2005. Almost nine hundred of these vulnerabilities...

RIPPER ATM Malware and the 12 Million Baht Jackpot

On Aug. 23, 2016, FireEye detected a potentially new ATM malware sample that used some interesting techniques not seen before. To add more fuel to an existing fire, the sample was uploaded to VirusTotal from an IP address in Thailand a couple of minutes before the Bangkok Post newspaper reported...

Resurrection of the Evil Miner

At FireEye Labs, we recently detected the resurgence of a coin mining campaign with a novel and unconventional infection vector in the form of an iFRAME inline frame – an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a web page that allows users to get content from another separate sourc...

LATENTBOT: Trace Me If You Can

FireEye Labs recently uncovered LATENTBOT, a new, highly obfuscated BOT that has been in the wild since mid-2013. It has managed to leave hardly any traces on the Internet, is capable of watching its victims without ever being noticed, and can even corrupt a hard disk, thus making a PC useless...

'Ghostwriter' Influence Campaign: Unknown Actors Leverage Website Compromises and Fabricated Content to Push Narratives Aligned With Russian Security Interests

Mandiant Threat Intelligence has tied together several information operations that we assess with moderate confidence comprise part of a broader influence campaign—ongoing since at least March 2017—aligned with Russian security interests. The operations have primarily targeted audiences in...

Mahalo FIN7: Responding to the Criminal Operators’ New Tools and Techniques

During several recent incident response engagements, FireEye Mandiant investigators uncovered new tools in FIN7’s malware arsenal and kept pace as the global criminal operators attempted new evasion techniques. In this blog, we reveal two of FIN7’s new tools that we have called BOOSTWRITE and...

Spear Phishing Techniques Used in Attacks Targeting the Mongolian Government

Introduction FireEye recently observed a sophisticated campaign targeting individuals within the Mongolian government. Targeted individuals that enabled macros in a malicious Microsoft Word document may have been infected with Poison Ivy, a popular remote access tool RAT that has been used for...

New Variant of Ploutus ATM Malware Observed in the Wild in Latin America

Introduction Ploutus is one of the most advanced ATM malware families we’ve seen in the last few years. Discovered for the first time in Mexico back in 2013, Ploutus enabled criminals to empty ATMs using either an external keyboard attached to the machine or via SMS message, a technique that had...

Rollout or Not: the Benefits and Risks of iOS Remote Hot Patching

Previously On iOS Remote Hot Patching Apple’s detailed app review process has resulted in greater security for iOS apps made available through the App Store. However, this review process can be lengthy, which negatively impacts developers who need to quickly patch a buggy or insecure app. As a...

MESSAGETAP: Who’s Reading Your Text Messages?

FireEye Mandiant recently discovered a new malware family used by APT41 a Chinese APT group that is designed to monitor and save SMS traffic from specific phone numbers, IMSI numbers and keywords for subsequent theft. Named MESSAGETAP, the tool was deployed by APT41 in a telecommunications networ...

Hancitor (AKA Chanitor) observed using multiple attack approaches

Many threat actors use multiple attack vectors to ensure success. The individuals using Hancitor malware also known by the name Chanitor are no exception and have taken three approaches to deliver the malware in order to ultimately steal data from their victims. These techniques include uncommon...

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...

Open Sourcing StringSifter

Malware analysts routinely use the Strings program during static analysis in order to inspect a binary's printable characters. However, identifying relevant strings by hand is time consuming and prone to human error. Larger binaries produce upwards of thousands of strings that can quickly evoke...

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...

FLARE Script Series: flare-dbg Plug-ins

Introduction This post continues the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE script series. In this post, we continue to discuss the flare-dbg project. If you haven’t read my first post on using flare-dbg to automate string decoding, be sure to check it out! We created the flare-dbg Pytho...

Financially Motivated Actors Are Expanding Access Into OT: Analysis of Kill Lists That Include OT Processes Used With Seven Malware Families

Mandiant Threat Intelligence has researched and written extensively on the increasing financially motivated threat activity directly impacting operational technology OT networks. Some of this research is available in our previous blog posts on industrial post-compromise ransomware and FireEye's...

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...

APT28: At the Center of the Storm

On Jan. 6, 2017, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence released its Intelligence Community Assessment: Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. Still, questions persist about Russian involvement. Did the Russian government direct the group responsible for the...

Increased Use of WMI for Environment Detection and Evasion

Introduction Throughout the past few months, FireEye Labs has observed an increased use of Windows Management Instrumentation WMI queries for environment detection and evasion of dynamic analysis and virtualization engines. WMI provides high-level interaction with Windows objects using C/C++,...

Dridex Botnet Resumes Spam Operations After the Holidays

FireEye Labs observed that Dridex operators were active during the holiday season. However, during the post-Christmas and New Year weeks, we observed a slowdown in their spam campaigns. Interestingly, their breaks were short. Over the past few weeks they have resumed operations and are building...

Hacking Operational Technology for Defense: Lessons Learned From OT Red Teaming Smart Meter Control Infrastructure

High-profile security incidents in the past decade have brought increased scrutiny to cyber security for operational technology OT. However, there is a continued perception across critical infrastructure organizations that OT networks are isolated from public networks—such as the Internet. In...

M-Trends 2021: A View From the Front Lines

We are thrilled to launch M-Trends 2021, the 12th edition of our annual FireEye Mandiant publication. The past year has been unique, as we witnessed an unprecedented combination of global events. Business operations shifted in response to the worldwide pandemic and threat actors continued to...

Bypassing MassLogger Anti-Analysis — a Man-in-the-Middle Approach

The FireEye Front Line Applied Research & Expertise FLARE Team attempts to always stay on top of the most current and emerging threats. As a member of the FLARE Reverse Engineer team, I recently received a request to analyze a fairly new credential stealer identified as MassLogger. Despite the la...

Social Engineering Based on Stimulus Bill and COVID-19 Financial Compensation Schemes Expected to Grow in Coming Weeks

Given the community interest and media coverage surrounding the economic stimulus bill currently being considered by the United States House of Representatives, we anticipate attackers will increasingly leverage lures tailored to the new stimulus bill and related recovery efforts such as stimulus...

Ransomware Against the Machine: How Adversaries are Learning to Disrupt Industrial Production by Targeting IT and OT

Since at least 2017, there has been a significant increase in public disclosures of ransomware incidents impacting industrial production and critical infrastructure organizations. Well-known ransomware families like WannaCry, LockerGoga, MegaCortex, Ryuk, Maze, and now SNAKEHOSE a.k.a. Snake /...

Going ATOMIC: Clustering and Associating Attacker Activity at Scale

At FireEye, we work hard to detect, track, and stop attackers. As part of this work, we learn a great deal of information about how various attackers operate, including details about commonly used malware, infrastructure, delivery mechanisms, and other tools and techniques. This knowledge is buil...

Digging Up the Past: Windows Registry Forensics Revisited

Introduction FireEye consultants frequently utilize Windows registry data when performing forensic analysis of computer networks as part of incident response and compromise assessment missions. This can be useful to discover malicious activity and to determine what data may have been stolen from ...

What are Deep Neural Networks Learning About Malware?

An increasing number of modern antivirus solutions rely on machine learning ML techniques to protect users from malware. While ML-based approaches, like FireEye Endpoint Security’s MalwareGuard capability, have done a great job at detecting new threats, they also come with substantial development...

WMImplant – A WMI Based Agentless Post-Exploitation RAT Developed in PowerShell

Just over one year ago November 2015, I released WMIOps, a PowerShell script that enables a user to carry out different actions via Windows Management Instrumentation WMI on the local machine or a remote machine. WMIOps can: Start or stop a process. Return a list of all running processes. Power...

Credit Card Data and Other Information Targeted in Netflix Phishing Campaign

Introduction Through FireEye’s Email Threat Prevention ETP solution, FireEye Labs discovered a phishing campaign in the wild targeting the credit card data and other personal information of Netflix users primarily based in the United States. This campaign is interesting because of the evasion...