3. Who am I – Michael Gough
» Blue Team Defender Ninja, Malware Archaeologist, Logoholic
» I love “properly” configured logs – they tell us Who, What, Where,
When and hopefully How
Creator of
» Malware Management Framework
» Several Windows Logging Cheat Sheets
» Co-Creator of “Log-MD” – Log Malicious Discovery Tool
• With @Boettcherpwned – Brakeing Down Security PodCast
» @HackerHurricane and also my Blog
5. » We discovered this in
May 2012
» Met with the Feds ;-)
Why you should listen to me?
MalwareArchaeology.com
2014 - We gave an infected VM to one of the Big
IR Firms… They came back “Yup.. It’s clean” #Fail
6. Malware evolves
» So must we
» Darwin says
• Evolve or die
» Well… Evolve or get breached anyways
» Getting breached means an RGE !!!
• Resume Generating Event
10. DBIR 2016
MalwareArchaeology.com 10
• The dreaded 3rd
party call and Law
Enforcement
notifications going
up
• Fraud and Internal
detection going
down
14. Sophos Says…
» 70% of malware is unique to 1 company (APT)
» 80% of malware is unique to 10 or less (APT)
» That means…
» 20% of malware is what the AV industry focuses
on, but it is what most of you and everyone in
this room sees and gets by:
• Attachments in email
• URL in email
• Surfing the web
- Ads
- WordPress, Drupal, Joomla…
MalwareArchaeology.com
15. A quick look at
Advanced Malware
Artifacts
MalwareArchaeology.com
16. Winnti - Malware Infection
Malware Launch
Hiding malware
in the Registry
Modify Service
17. Escalate permissions obvious NOT your admin
Check the Service used
Modify
Permissions
Push out malware using CMD Shell & CScript
18. Using the Registry for storage
Update Registry
Change Registry Permissions
Change permissions on files
19. Bad behavior becomes obvious
Doing Recon
Going after Terminal Services
Query Users
20. You can even capture their Credentials
Caught THEIR
Credentials!
23. Persistence
» Infector… One for the DLL (infect.exe) and
one for the Driver (InfectSys.exe)
» Altered system management binaries
• McAfeeFrameworkService
• BESClientHelper
• Attempted a few others, some failed
25. A quick look at
Commodity Malware
Artifacts
MalwareArchaeology.com
26. Angler delivered Kovter
» Unique way to hide the persistence
» Inserted a null byte in the name of the Run key so that
RegEdit and Reg Query fail to read and display the
value
» And a LARGE Reg Key (anything over 20k is large)
28. Dridex Persistence
» New method towards the end of 2015, nothing in the Registry
showing persistence while system was running
» In memory only until system shutdown
• On shutdown the Run key was created
» On startup the malware loads and Run key deleted
32. Where to start
» What am I suppose to set?
“Windows Logging Cheat Sheet”
“Windows File Auditing Cheat Sheet”
“Windows Registry Auditing Cheat Sheet”
“Windows Splunk Logging Cheat Sheet”
“Malware Management Framework”
» Find them all here:
• MalwareArchaeology.com
33. PowerShell
» It’s coming… in a BIG way - It’s already here
» Ben Ten uses it (Not PowerShell)
» Carlos uses it (MetaSploit)
» Dave uses it (SET)
» Kevin too (Pen Tester)
» Dridex uses it
» RansomWare uses it
» And logging SUCKS for it
35. So what do we do about PowerShell?
» The “Windows PowerShell Logging Cheat Sheet”
» Designed to catch the folks I just mentioned, and others ;-)
» Get it at:
• MalwareArchaeology.com
37. How to catch this stuff
Enable Command Line Logging !!!!
» At the time of Winnti 2014 ONLY Win 8.1 and Win 2012 R2 had command
line logging
» Which we had, then we saw this in our alerts of suspicious commands
(Cscript & cmd.exe & cacls & net & takeown & pushd & attrib)
SIX Commands
» Scripts too
38. And this query - Splunk
» index=windows LogName=Security EventCode=4688 NOT (Account_Name=*$)
(arp.exe OR at.exe OR bcdedit.exe OR bcp.exe OR chcp.exe OR cmd.exe OR
cscript.exe OR csvde OR dsquery.exe OR ipconfig.exe OR mimikatz.exe OR
nbtstat.exe OR nc.exe OR netcat.exe OR netstat.exe OR nmap OR nslookup.exe OR
netsh OR OSQL.exe OR ping.exe OR powershell.exe OR powercat.ps1 OR
psexec.exe OR psexecsvc.exe OR psLoggedOn.exe OR procdump.exe OR
qprocess.exe OR query.exe OR rar.exe OR reg.exe OR route.exe OR runas.exe OR
rundll32 OR schtasks.exe OR sethc.exe OR sqlcmd.exe OR sc.exe OR ssh.exe OR
sysprep.exe OR systeminfo.exe OR system32net.exe OR reg.exe OR tasklist.exe
OR tracert.exe OR vssadmin.exe OR whoami.exe OR winrar.exe OR wscript.exe OR
"winrm.*" OR "winrs.*" OR wmic.exe OR wsmprovhost.exe OR wusa.exe) | eval
Message=split(Message,".") | eval Short_Message=mvindex(Message,0) | table
_time, host, Account_Name, Process_Name, Process_ID, Process_Command_Line,
New_Process_Name, New_Process_ID, Creator_Process_ID, Short_Message | stats
count > 2
39. So how do you do this?
» Malware Management allowed us to setup alerts on
artifacts from other malware analysis
• MalwareManagementFramework.org
» Of course our own experience too
» Malware Discovery allowed us to find odd file hashes,
command line details, registry locations
» Malware Analysis gave us the details
40. What we all need to look for
» Logs of course, properly configured - Events
• Command Line details
• Admin tools misused – executions
• New Services (retail PoS should know this)
• Drivers used (.sys)
» New Files dropped anywhere on disk – Hashes
• Infected management binary (hash changed)
» Delete on startup, write on shutdown – File & Reg Auditing
» Scripts hidden in the registry – Registry Compare
» Payload hidden in the registry – Large Reg Keys
» Malware Communication – IP and WhoIS info
» Expand PowerShell detection
» VirusTotal Lookups
41. So what did we
take away
from all of this?
MalwareArchaeology.com
42. You basically have 3 options
» Do nothing – Eventually leading to an RGE
» Log Management / SIEM
• Cost $$$ and storage
• But IS the best option, better than most security
solutions if you want my opinion
» What if I don’t have Log Management or SIEM?
45. » Log and Malicious Discovery tool
» When you run the tool, it tells you what auditing and
settings to configure that it requires. LOG-MD won’t
harvest anything until you configure the system!
» So answers How to check for the What to set I already
told you about
46. Functions
» Audit Report of log settings compared to:
• The “Windows Logging Cheat Sheet”
• Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks
• Also USGCB and AU ACSC
» White lists to filter out the known good
• By IP Address
• By Process Command Line and/or Process Name
• By File and Registry locations (requires File and Registry auditing to be set)
» Full File System hash baseline and compare
» Full Registry baseline and compare
» Report.csv - data from logs specific to security
• 12 reports total
48. Purpose
» Malware Analysis Lab – Why we initially developed it
» Investigate a suspect system
» Audit the Windows - Advanced Audit Policy settings
» Help MOVE or PUSH security forward
» Give the IR folks what they need and the Feds too
» Take a full system (File and Reg) snapshot to compare to another system and report the
differences
» Discover tricky malware artifacts (Large Keys, Null Byte, AutoRuns)
» Deploy with anything you want, SCCM, LanDesk, PSExec, PS, etc…
» Replace several tools we use today with one easy to use utility that does much more
» Replace several older tools and GUI tools
» To answer the question: Is this system infected or clean?
» And do it quickly - SPEED !
49. Free Edition
» Audit your settings – Do you comply?
» Harvest security relevant log data – 12 Reports
» Whitelist log events by IP, Cmd Line, Process and File /
Registry audit locations
» Perform a full file hash baseline of a system
» Compare a suspect system to a Baseline or Dir
» Perform a full Registry snapshot of a system
» Compare a suspect system to a Reg Baseline
» Look for Large Registry Keys for hidden payloads
50. » Everything the Free Edition does and…
» More reports, breakdown of things to look for
» PowerShell report
» Specify the Output directory
» Harvest Sysmon logs
» Harvest WLS Logs
» Whitelist Hash compare results
» Whitelist Registry compare results
» Create a Master-Digest to exclude unique files
» Free updates for 1 year, expect a new release every quarter
» Manual – How to use LOG-MD Professional
51. Future Versions – In the works!
» WhoIs lookups of IP Addresses called
» VirusTotal lookups of discovered files
» Find parent-less processes
» Assess all processes and create a Whitelist
» Assess all services and create a Whitelist
» VirusTotal lookups of unknown or new processes and services
» Other API calls to security vendors
56. Use the power of Excel
» The reports are in .CSV format
» Excel has sorting and filters
» Filters are AWESOME to thin out your results
» You might take filtered results and add them to your
whitelist once vetted
» Save to .XLS and format, color code and produce your
report
» For .TXT files use NotePad++
57. So what do we get?
» WHAT Processes executed
» WHERE it executed from
» IP’s to enter into Log Management to see WHO
else opened the malware
» Details needed to remediate infection
» Details to improve your Active Defense!
» I did this in… 15 Minutes!
58. Resources
» Websites
• Log-MD.com The tool
» The “Windows Logging Cheat Sheet”
• MalwareArchaeology.com
» Malware Analysis Report links too
• To start your Malware Management program
» This presentation is on SlideShare and website
• Search for MalwareArchaeology or LOG-MD
59. Questions
You can find us at:
» Log-MD.com
» @HackerHurricane
» @Boettcherpwned
» MalwareArchaeology.com
» HackerHurricane.com (blog)
» MalwareManagementFramework.Org
» http://www.slideshare.net – LinkedIn now