Repurposing Neural Networks to Generate Synthetic Media for Information Operations

FireEye’s Data Science and Information Operations Analysis teams released this blog post to coincide with our Black Hat USA 2020 Briefing, which details how open source, pre-trained neural networks can be leveraged to generate synthetic media for malicious purposes. To summarize our presentation,...

FakeNet Genie: Improving Dynamic Malware Analysis with Cheat Codes for FakeNet-NG

As developers of the network simulation tool FakeNet-NG, reverse engineers on the FireEye FLARE team, and malware analysis instructors, we get to see how different analysts use FakeNet-NG and the challenges they face. We have learned that FakeNet-NG provides many useful features and solutions of...

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...

Monitoring Windows Console Activity (Part 1)

Introduction While performing incident response, Mandiant encounters attackers actively using systems on a compromised network. This activity often includes using interactive console programs via RDP such as the command prompt, PowerShell, and sometimes custom command and control C2 console tools...

Announcing the Fourth Annual Flare-On Challenge

The fourth annual Flare-On Challenge – the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE team’s yearly reverse engineering contest – is scheduled to kick off on Sept. 1, 2017, at 8pm ET. This is a CTF-style challenge for all active and aspiring reverse engineers, malware analysts, and security...

Obfuscation in the Wild: Targeted Attackers Lead the Way in Evasion Techniques

Throughout 2017 we have observed a marked increase in the use of command line evasion and obfuscation by a range of targeted attackers. Cyber espionage groups and financial threat actors continue to adopt the latest cutting-edge application whitelisting bypass techniques and introduce innovative...

Still Getting Served: A Look at Recent Malvertising Campaigns Involving Exploit Kits

Malvertising occurs when an online advertising network knowingly or unknowingly serves up malicious advertisements on a website. Malvertisements are a type of “drive-by” threat that tend to result in users being infected with malware for simply visiting a website. The victims of this threat are...

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...

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...

Pwned by Vpon

Vpon is one of many mobile ad SDKs marketed towards mainland Chinese and Taiwanese developers and app users. Recently, FireEye mobile security researchers identified a branch of Vpon ad SDK on iOS containing code that allows a malicious actor be it the app developer or the SDK creator to remotely...

Connected Cars: The Open Road for Hackers

As vehicles become both increasingly complex and better connected to the Internet, their newfound versatility may be manipulated for malicious purposes. Three of the most concerning potential threats looking ahead to the next few years are those posed by manipulating vehicle operation, ransomware...

Angler Exploit Kit Evading EMET

We recently encountered some exploits from Angler Exploit Kit EK that are completely evading Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit EMET. This is something we are seeing for the first time in the wild, and we only observed it affecting systems running Windows 7. Angler EK uses complex...

MIRcon 2013 – Day 1 Highlights

Happy Day 2 of MIRcon®! Yesterday, Mandiant's CEO Kevin Mandia kicked off MIRcon 2013 with a keynote on attacking the security gap, discussing the necessity of information-sharing and his experience witnessing the evolution of cybercrime. From there we moved on to thought-provoking discussions in...

A Hands-On Introduction to Mandiant's Approach to OT Red Teaming

Operational technology OT asset owners have historically considered red teaming of OT and industrial control system ICS networks to be too risky due to the potential for disruptions or adverse impact to production systems. While this mindset has remained largely unchanged for years, Mandiant's...

M-Trends 2020: Insights From the Front Lines

Today we release M-Trends 2020, the 11th edition of our popular annual FireEye Mandiant report. This latest M-Trends contains all of the statistics, trends, case studies and hardening recommendations that readers have come to expect through the years—and more. One of the most exciting takeaways...

CertUtil Qualms: They Came to Drop FOMBs

This blog post covers an interesting intrusion attempt that Mandiant Managed Defense thwarted involving the rapid weaponization of a recently disclosed vulnerability combined with the creative use of WMI compiled “.bmf” files and CertUtil for obfuscated execution. This intrusion attempt highlight...

Finding Evil in Windows 10 Compressed Memory, Part One: Volatility and Rekall Tools

Paging all digital forensicators, incident responders, and memory manager enthusiasts! Have you ever found yourself at a client site working around the clock to extract evil from a Windows 10 image? Have you hit the wall at step zero, running into difficulties viewing a process tree, or enumerati...

To SDB, Or Not To SDB: FIN7 Leveraging Shim Databases for Persistence

In 2017, Mandiant responded to multiple incidents we attribute to FIN7, a financially motivated threat group associated with malicious operations dating back to 2015. Throughout the various environments, FIN7 leveraged the CARBANAK backdoor, which this group has used in previous operations. A...

Evolving Analytics for Execution Trace Data

Five years ago, Mandiant released a proof of concept tool named ShimCacheParser, along with a blog post titled “Leveraging the Application Compatibility Cache in Forensic Investigations”. Since then, ShimCache metadata has become increasingly popular as a source of forensic evidence, both for...

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...

‘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...

‘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 ...

Rotten Apples: Resurgence

In June 2016, we published a blog about a phishing campaign targeting the Apple IDs and passwords of Chinese Apple users that emerged in the first quarter of 2016 referred to as the “Zycode” phishing campaign. At FireEye Labs we have an automated system designed to proactively detect newly...

Analyzing the Malware Analysts – Inside FireEye’s FLARE Team

At the Black Hat USA 2016 conference in Las Vegas last week, I was fortunate to sit down with Michael Sikorski, Director, FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE Team. During our conversation we discussed the origin of the FLARE team, what it takes to analyze malware, Michael’s book...

Locky is Back Asking for Unpaid Debts

On June 21, 2016, FireEye’s Dynamic Threat Intelligence DTI identified an increase in JavaScript contained within spam emails. FireEye analysts determined the increase was the result of a new Locky ransomware spam campaign. As shown in Figure 1, Locky spam activity was uninterrupted until June 1,...

Automatically Extracting Obfuscated Strings from Malware using the FireEye Labs Obfuscated String Solver (FLOSS)

Introduction and Motivation Have you ever run strings.exe on a malware executable and its output provided you with IP addresses, file names, registry keys, and other indicators of compromise IOCs? Great! No need to run further analysis or hire expensive experts to determine if a file is malicious...

Angler Exploit Kit Evading EMET

We recently encountered some exploits from Angler Exploit Kit EK that are completely evading Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit EMET. This is something we are seeing for the first time in the wild, and we only observed it affecting systems running Windows 7. Angler EK uses complex...

Cerber Ransomware Partners with the Dridex Spam Distributor

Cerber ransomware incorporates the unusual feature of “speaking” its ransom message after successfully infecting a user machine and encrypting files. Cerber was first seen in the wild at the end of February 2016 and was observed being delivered mostly via exploit kits EK, notably using Magnitude...

A Cyber Revolution: Advanced Attacks Increasing in EMEA Reflect Political Tension

Financial, geopolitical and economical changes made 2015 a very busy year for the Europe, Middle East and Africa EMEA region, particularly in the cyber realm. FireEye has been monitoring these shifting cyber trends and has identified considerable evolutions to the EMEA threat landscape when...

A Cyber Revolution: Advanced Attacks Increasing in EMEA Reflect Political Tension

Financial, geopolitical and economical changes made 2015 a very busy year for the Europe, Middle East and Africa EMEA region, particularly in the cyber realm. FireEye has been monitoring these shifting cyber trends and has identified considerable evolutions to the EMEA threat landscape when...

SlemBunk: An Evolving Android Trojan Family Targeting Users of Worldwide Banking Apps

FireEye mobile researchers recently identified a series of Android trojan apps that are designed to imitate the legitimate apps of 33 financial management institutions and service providers across the globe. We dub the family “SlemBunk,” and have seen it covering three major continents: North...

FLARE IDA Pro Script Series: Automating Function Argument Extraction

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Preparing for Managed Security Services

Wade Woolwine Presents at MIRcon® 2013 As a complement to my MIRcon® 2013 presentation titled "Getting the Best Bang for the Buck with Managed Security Providers" and to address some questions I received from the audience, I have prepared a quick summary of my presentation. Many businesses consid...

It’s Your Money and They Want It Now — The Cycle of Adversary Pursuit

When we discover new intrusions, we ask ourselves questions that will help us understand the totality of the activity set. How common is this activity? Is there anything unique or special about this malware or campaign? What is new and what is old in terms of TTPs or infrastructure? Is this being...

The Missing LNK — Correlating User Search LNK files

Forensic investigators use LNK shortcut files to recover metadata about recently accessed files, including files deleted after the time of access. In a recent investigation, FireEye Mandiant encountered LNK files that indicated an attacker accessed files included in Windows Explorer search result...

SAIGON, the Mysterious Ursnif Fork

Ursnif aka Gozi/Gozi-ISFB is one of the oldest banking malware families still in active distribution. While the first major version of Ursnif was identified in 2006, several subsequent versions have been released in large part due source code leaks. FireEye reported on a previously unidentified...

IDA, I Think It’s Time You And I Had a Talk: Controlling IDA Pro With Voice Control Software

Introduction This blog post is the next episode in the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering FLARE team Script Series. Today, we are sharing something quite unusual. It is not a tool or a virtual machine distribution, nor is it a plugin or script for a popular reverse engineering tool or...

Remote Symbol Resolution

Introduction The following blog discusses a couple of common techniques that malware uses to obscure its access to the Windows API. In both forms examined, analysts must calculate the API start address and resolve the symbol from the runtime process in order to determine functionality. After...

FIN10: Anatomy of a Cyber Extortion Operation

FireEye has identified a set of financially motivated intrusion operations being carried out by a threat actor we have dubbed FIN10. FIN10 is known for compromising networks, stealing sensitive data, and directly engaging victim executives and board members in an attempt to extort them into payin...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Targeted Attacks against Banks in the Middle East

Introduction In the first week of May 2016, FireEye’s DTI identified a wave of emails containing malicious attachments being sent to multiple banks in the Middle East region. The threat actors appear to be performing initial reconnaissance against would-be targets, and the attacks caught our...

MULTIGRAIN – Point of Sale Attackers Make an Unhealthy Addition to the Pantry

FireEye recently discovered a new variant of a point of sale POS malware family known as NewPosThings. This variant, which we call “MULTIGRAIN”, consists largely of a subset of slightly modified code from NewPosThings. The variant is highly targeted, digitally signed, and exfiltrates stolen payme...

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...

XcodeGhost S: A New Breed Hits the US

Just over a month ago, iOS users were warned of the threat to their devices by the XcodeGhost malware. Apple quickly reacted, taking down infected apps from the App Store and releasing new security features to stop malicious activities. Through continuous monitoring of our customers’ networks,...

Mergers and Acquisitions: When Two Companies and APT Groups Come Together

With Apple’s purchase of Beats, Pfizer’s failed bids for AstraZeneca, and financial experts pointing to a rally in the M&A market, the last month was a busy one for mergers and acquisitions. Of course, when we first see headlines of a high profile company’s plans for a merger or acquisition, we...

Excelerating Analysis, Part 2 — X[LOOKUP] Gon’ Pivot To Ya

In December 2019, we published a blog post on augmenting analysis using Microsoft Excel for various data sets for incident response investigations. As we described, investigations often include custom or proprietary log formats and miscellaneous, non-traditional forensic artifacts. There are, of...