Swedish Windows Security User Group

Dofoil is a sophisticated threat that attempted to install coin miner malware on hundreds of thousands of computers in March, 2018. In previous blog posts we detailed how behavior monitoring and machine learning in Windows Defender AV protected customers from a massive Dofoil outbreak that we traced back to a software update poisoning campaign several weeks prior. Notably, customers of Windows 10 S, a special Windows 10 configuration that provides streamlined Microsoft-verified security, were not affected by the Dofoil outbreak.

In this blog post, we will expound on Dofoils anti-debugging and anti-analysis tactics, and demonstrate how the rich detection libraries of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection and Windows Defender Exploit Guard can help during investigation.

We found that Dofoil was designed to be elusive to analysis. It checks its environment and stops running in virtual machine environments. It also checks for various analysis tools and kills them right away. This can make malware analysis and assessment challenging.

The following diagram shows the multi-stage malware execution process, which includes checks for traits of analysis environments during some stages.

Figure 1. Dofoil multi-stage shellcode and payload execution flow

The table below describes the purpose of each stage. The first five stages have at least one or two different techniques that can deter dynamic or static malware analysis.

STAGES	DESCRIPTION
1. Obfuscated wrapper code	Anti-heuristics Anti-emulation
2. Bootstrap module	Performs self-process hollowing to load the next module
3. Anti-debugging module	Performs anti-debugging operation
4. Trojan downloader module	Performs system environment checks Performs anti-VM operation Injects itself to explorer.exe through process hollowing
5. Trojan downloader module in explorer.exe	Contacts C&C server to download trojan and run it using process hollowing technique
6. Payload downloader module in explorer.exe	Contacts C&C server to download the main payload
7. Trojan module	Steals credentials from various application settings and sends stolen into to the C&C server over HTTP channel
8. CoinMiner.D	Mines digital currencies

Table 1. Dofoil’s multi-stage modules

Initial stages

The first three stages (i.e., obfuscated wrapper code, bootstrap module, anti-debugging module) use the following techniques to avoid analysis and identification.

ANTI-ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES	DESCRIPTION
Benign code insertion	Inserts a huge benign code block to confuse heuristics and manual inspection
Anti-emulation	Enumerates an arbitrary registry key (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{3050F557-98B5-11CF-BB82-00AA00BDCE0B}) and compares the data with an expected value (DispHTMLCurrentStyle) to check if the malware runs inside an emulator
Self-process hollowing	Uses the process hollowing technique on the current process, making analysis extra difficult due to the altered code mapping
Debugger checks	Checks for debuggers, and modifies code to crash. This can add additional layer of confusion to researchers, who are bound to investigate the cause of the crashes. It checks for the PEB.BeingDebugged and PEB.NtGlobalFlag fields in the PEB structure. For example, PEB.BeingDebugged is set to 1 and PEB.NtGlobalFlag is set to FLG_HEAP_ENABLE_TAIL_CHECK|FLG_HEAP_ENABLE_FREE_CHECK| FLG_HEAP_VALIDATE_PARAMETERS when a debugger is attached to the process.

Table 2. Anti-analysis techniques

The first stage contains some benign-looking code before the actual malicious code. This can give the executable a harmless appearance. It can also make the emulation of the code difficult because emulating various API calls that are not present in many malware codes can be challenging.

The first-stage code also performs a registry key enumeration to make sure it has the expected value. When all checks are passed, it decodes the second-stage shellcode and runs it on the allocated memory. This shellcode un-maps the original main modules memory, and then decodes the third-stage shellcode into that memory this is known as a self-process hollowing technique.

Figure 2. Self-modification based on PEB.BeingDebugged value

Windows Defender ATPs process tree can help with investigation by exposing these anti-debugging techniques.

Figure 3. Windows Defender ATP process tree showing anti-debugging techniques

Trojan downloader module

The trojan downloader module performs various environment checks, including virtual environment and analysis tool checks, before downloading the payload.

ANTI-ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES	DESCRIPTION
Check module name	Checks if the main executable name contains the string “sample”
Check volume serial	Checks if current volume serial number is 0xCD1A40 or 0x70144646
Check modules	Checks the presence of DLLs related to debuggers
Check disk-related registry keys	Checks the value of the registry key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk\Enum against well-known disk name patterns for virtual machines (qemu, virtual, vmware, xen, ffffcce24)
Process check	Checks running processes and kills those with processes names associated with analysis tools (procexp.exe, procexp64.exe, procmon.exe, procmon64.exe, tcpview.exe, wireshark.exe, processhacker.exe, ollydbg.exe, idaq.exe, x32dbg.exe)
Windows class name check	Checks the current Windows class names and exits when some well-known names are found (Autoruns, PROCEXPL, PROCMON_WINDOW_CLASS, TCPViewClass, ProcessHacker, OllyDbg, WinDbgFrameClass)

Table 3. Anti-analysis techniqueof Dofoil’s trojan downloader module

The list of target process names and Windows class names exist in custom checksum form. The checksum algorithm looks like the following:

Figure 4. Shift and XOR custom checksum algorithm

The purpose of this checksum is to prevent malware researchers from quickly figuring out what analysis tools it detects, making analysis more time-consuming.

STRING	CHECKSUM
Autoruns	0x0E5C1C5D
PROCEXPL	0x1D421B41
PROCMON_WINDOW_CLASS	0x4B0C105A
TCPViewClass	0x1D4F5C43
ProcessHacker	0x571A415E
OllyDbg	0x4108161D
WinDbgFrameClass	0x054E1905
procexp.exe	0x19195C02
procexp64.exe	0x1C0E041D
procmon.exe	0x06185D0B
procmon64.exe	0x1D07120A
tcpview.exe	0x060B5118
wireshark.exe	0x550E1E0D
processhacker.exe	0x51565C47
ollydbg.exe	0x04114C14
x32dbg.exe	0x5F4E5C04
idaq.exe	0x14585A12

Table 4. String checksum table used for process names and Windows class names

Process hollowing

Dofoil heavily uses the process hollowing technique. Its main target for process hollowing is explorer.exe. The Dofoil shellcode launches a new instance of explorer.exe, allocates shellcode in heap region, and then modifies the entry point code to jump into the shellcode. This way, the malware avoids using CreateRemoteThread API, but can still achieve code injection.

Figure 5. Modification of explorer.exe entry point code

Windows Defender ATP can detect the process hollowing behavior with advanced memory signals. The following process tree shows that the malware injects itself into explorer.exe using the process hollowing technique.

Figure 6. Windows Defender ATP alert process tree showing the first process hollowing

When the shellcode downloads another layer of payload, it spawns another explorer.exe to inject the payload into using process hollowing. Windows Defender ATP can save analysis time on these cases by pinpointing the malicious actions, eliminating the need for guessing what these newly spawned Windows system processes are doing.

Figure 7. Windows Defender ATP alert process tree showing the second process hollowing

The process hollowing behavior can be detected through Exploit protection in Windows Defender Exploit Guard. This can be done by enabling the Export Address Filter (EAF) mitigation against explorer.exe. The detection happens when the shellcode goes through the export addresses of the modules to find the export address of the LoadLibraryA and GetProcAddress functions.

Figure 8. Export Address Filter (EAF) event exposed in Event viewer

Windows Defender Exploit Guard events are also exposed in the Windows Defender ATP portal:

Figure 9. Windows Defender ATP view of the Windows Defender Exploit Guard event

Adding Windows Defender Exploit Guard EAF audit/block policy to common system processes like explorer.exe, cmd.exe, or verclsid.exe can be useful in finding and blocking process hollowing or process injection techniques commonly used by malware. This policy can impact third-party apps that may behave like shellcode, so we recommend testing Windows Defender Exploit Guard with audit mode enabled before enforcement.

Command-and-control (C&C) and NameCoin domains

Dofoils C&C connection is very cautious. The trojan code first tries to connect to well-known web pages and verifies that the malware has proper and real Internet connection, not simulated as in test environments. After it makes sure it has a real Internet connection, the malware makes HTTP connections to the actual C&C servers.

Figure 10. Access to known servers to confirm Internet connectivity

The malware uses NameCoin domain name servers. NameCoin is a decentralized name server system that provides extra privacy backed by blockchain technology. Except for the fact that the DNS client needs to use specific sets of NameCoin DNS servers, the overall operation is very similar to a normal DNS query. Because NameCoin uses blockchain technology, you can query the history of the domain name changes through blocks.

Figure 11. Malicious hostname DNS entry changes over time (https://namecha.in/name/d/vrubl)

Windows Defender ATP can provide visibility into the malwares network activities. The following alert process tree shows the malwares .bit domain resolution activity and, after that, the connections to the resolved C&C servers. You can also view other activities from the executable, for example, its connections to other servers using SMTP ports.

Figure 12. Windows Defender ATP alert process tree showing C&C server connection through NameCoin server name resolution

The Windows Defender ATP advanced hunting feature, which is currently in preview, can be used to hunt down more malware samples that possibly abuse NameCoin servers. For example, the following query will let you view recent connections observed in the network. This can lead to extra insights on other threats that use the same NameCoin servers.

Figure 13. Advanced hunting for other threats using the same NameCoin servers

The purpose of using NameCoin is to prevent easy sinkholing of the domains. Because there are no central authorities on the NameCoin domain name records, it is not possible for the authorities to change the domain record. Also, malware abusing NameCoin servers use massive numbers of NameCoin DNS servers to make full shutdown of those servers very difficult.

Conclusion

Dofoil is a very evasive malware. It has various system environment checks and tests Internet connectivity to make sure it runs on real machines, not in analysis environments or virtual machines. This can make the analysis time-consuming and can mislead malware analysis systems.

In attacks like the Dofoil outbreak, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP) can help network defenders analyze the timeline from the victim machine and get rich information on process execution flow, C&C connections, and process hollowing activities. Windows Defender ATP can be used as an analysis platform with fine-tuned visibility into system activities when set up in a lab environment. This can save time and resource during malware investigation.

In addition, Windows Defender Exploit Guard can be useful in finding malicious shellcodes that traverse export address tables. Windows Defender Exploit Guard can be an excellent tool for finding and blocking malware and exploit activities.

Windows Defender Exploit Guard events are surfaced in the Windows Defender ATP portal, which integrates protections from other Microsoft solutions, including Windows Defender AV and Windows Defender Application Guard. This integrated security management experience makes Windows Defender ATP a comprehensive solution for detecting and responding to a wide range of malicious activities across the network.

Windows 10 S, a special configuration of Windows 10, locks down devices against Dofoil and other attacks by working exclusively with apps from the Microsoft Store and using Microsoft Edge as the default browser. This streamlined, Microsoft-verified platform seals common malware entry points.

To test how Windows Defender ATP can help your organization detect, investigate, and respond to advanced attacks, sign up for a free trial.

 

 

Matt Oh, Stefan Sellmer, Jonathan Bar Or, Mark Wodrich
Windows Defender ATP Research

 

 

Indicators of compromise (IoCs)

TrojanDownloader:Win32/Dofoil.AB:

d191ee5b20ec95fe65d6708cbb01a6ce72374b309c9bfb7462206a0c7e039f4d

eaa63f6b500afedcaeb8d5b18a08fd6c7d95695ea7961834b974e2a653a42212

cded7aedca6b54a6d4273153864a25ccad35cba5cafeaec828a6ad5670a5973a

Trojan:Win32/Dofoil.AB:

070243ad7fb4b3c241741e564039c80ca65bfdf15daa4add70d5c5a3ed79cd5c

5f3efdc65551edb0122ab2c40738c48b677b1058f7dfcdb86b05af42a2d8299C

28ce9763a808c4a7509e9bf92d9ca80212a241dfa1aecd82caedf1f101eac692

5d7875abbbf104f665a0ee909c372e1319c5157dfc171e64ac2bc8b71766537f

Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner.D

2b83c69cf32c5f8f43ec2895ec9ac730bf73e1b2f37e44a3cf8ce814fb51f12

C&C URLs:

hxxp://levashov.bit/15022018/

hxxp://vrubl.bit/15022018/

C&C server:

vinik.bit

Related .bit domains (updated in same block as C&C server):

henkel.bit

makron.bit

makronwin.bit

NameCoin servers used by Dofoil:

139.59.208.246

130.255.73.90

31.3.135.232

52.174.55.168

185.121.177.177

185.121.177.53

62.113.203.55

144.76.133.38

169.239.202.202

5.135.183.146

142.0.68.13

103.253.12.18

62.112.8.85

69.164.196.21

107.150.40.234

162.211.64.20

217.12.210.54

89.18.27.34

193.183.98.154

51.255.167.0

91.121.155.13

87.98.175.85

185.97.7.7

 

 

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Attackers are determined to circumvent security defenses using increasingly sophisticated techniques. Fileless malware boosts the stealth and effectiveness of an attack, and two of last years major ransomware outbreaks (Petya and WannaCry) used fileless techniques as part of their kill chains.

The idea behind fileless malware is simple: If tools already exist on a device (for example PowerShell.exe or wmic.exe) to fulfill an attackers objectives, then why drop custom tools that could be flagged as malware? If an attacker can take over a process, run code in its memory space, and then use that code to call tools that are already on a device, the attack becomes more difficult to detect.

Successfully using this approach, sometimes called living off the land, is not a walk in the park. Theres another thing that attackers need to deal with: Establishing persistence. Memory is volatile, and with no files on disk, how can attackers get their code to auto-start after a system reboot and retain control of a compromised system?

Misfox: A fileless gateway to victim networks

In April 2016, a customer contacted the Microsoft Incident Response team about a case of cyber-extortion. The attackers had requested a substantial sum of money from the customer in exchange for not releasing their confidential corporate information that the attackers had stolen from the customers compromised computers. In addition, the attackers had threatened to “flatten” the network if the customer contacted law enforcement. It was a difficult situation.

Quick fact Windows Defender AV detections of Misfox more than doubled in Q2 2017 compared to Q1 2017.

The Microsoft Incident Response team investigated machines in the network, identified targeted implants, and mapped out the extent of the compromise. The customer was using a well-known third-party antivirus product that was installed on the vast majority of machines. While it was up-to-date with the latest signatures, the AV product had not detected any targeted implants.

The Microsoft team then discovered that the attackers attempted to encrypt files with ransomware twice. Luckily, those attempts failed. As it turned out, the threat to flatten the network was a plan B to monetize the attack after their plan A had failed.

Whats more, the team also discovered that the attackers had covertly persisted in the network for at least seven months through two separate channels:

• The first channel involved a backdoor named Swrort.A that was deployed on several machines; this backdoor was easily detected by antivirus.
• The second channel was much more subtle and interesting, because:

  • It did not infect any files on the device
  • It left no artifacts on disk
  • Common file scanning techniques could not detect it

Should you disable PowerShell? No. PowerShell is a powerful and secure management tool and is important for many system and IT functions. Attackers use malicious PowerShell scripts as post-exploitation technique that can only take place after an initial compromise has already occurred. Its misuse is a symptom of an attack that begins with other malicious actions like software exploitation, social engineering, or credential theft. The key is to prevent an attacker from getting into the position where they can misuse PowerShell. For tips on mitigating PowerShell abuse, continue reading.

The second tool was a strain of fileless malware called Misfox. Once Misfox was running in memory, it:

• Created a registry run key that launches a “one-liner” PowerShell cmdlet
• Launched an obfuscated PowerShell script stored in the registry BLOB; the obfuscated PowerShell script contained a reflective portable executable (PE) loader that loaded a Base64-encoded PE from the registry

Misfox did not drop any executable files, but the script stored in the registry ensured the malware persisted.

Fileless techniques

Misfox exemplifies how cyberattacks can incorporate fileless components in the kill chain. Attackers use several fileless techniques that can make malware implants stealthy and evasive. These techniques include:

1. Reflective DLL injection
   Reflective DLL injection involves the manual loading of malicious DLLs into a process’ memory without the need for said DLLs to be on disk. The malicious DLL can be hosted on a remote attacker-controlled machine and delivered through a staged network channel (for example, Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol), or embedded in obfuscated form inside infection vectors like macros and scripts. This results in the evasion of the OS mechanism that monitors and keeps track of loading executable modules. An example of malware that uses Reflective DLL injection is HackTool:Win32/Mikatz!dha.
2. Memory exploits
   Adversaries use fileless memory exploits to run arbitrary code remotely on victim machines. For example, the UIWIX threat uses the EternalBlue exploit, which was used by both Petya and WannaCry, and has been observed to install the DoublePulsar backdoor, which lives entirely in the kernel’s memory (SMB Dispatch Table). Unlike Petya and Wannacry, UIWIX does not drop any files on disk.
3. Script-based techniques
   Scripting languages provide powerful means for delivering memory-only executable payloads. Script files can embed encoded shellcodes or binaries that they can decrypt on the fly at run time and execute via .NET objects or directly with APIs without requiring them to be written to disk. The scripts themselves can be hidden in the registry (as in the case of Misfox), read from network streams, or simply run manually in the command-line by an attacker, without ever touching the disk.
4. WMI persistence
   Weve seen certain attackers use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) repository to store malicious scripts that are then invoked periodically using WMI bindings. This article [PDF] presents very good examples.

Fileless malware-specific mitigations on Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 brings together a set of next-gen security technologies to protect devices, SaaS apps, email, and infrastructure from a wide spectrum of attacks. The following Windows-related components from Microsoft 365 have capabilities to detect and mitigate malware that rely on fileless techniques:

Tip In addition to fileless malware-specific mitigations, Windows 10 comes with other next-gen security technologies that mitigate attacks in general. For example, Windows Defender Application Guard can stop the delivery of malware, fileless or otherwise, through Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer. Read about the Microsoft 365 security and management features available in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Windows Defender Antivirus

Windows Defender AV blocks the vast majority of malware using generic, heuristic, and behavior-based detections, as well as local and cloud-based machine learning models. Windows Defender AV protects against fileless malware through these capabilities:

• Detecting script-based techniques by leveraging AMSI, which provides the capability to inspect PowerShell and other script types, even with multiple layers of obfuscation
• Detecting and remediating WMI persistence techniques by scanning the WMI repository, both periodically and whenever anomalous behavior is observed
• Detecting reflective DLL injection through enhanced memory scanning techniques and behavioral monitoring

Windows Defender Exploit Guard

Windows Defender Exploit Guard (Windows Defender EG), a new set of host intrusion prevention capabilities, helps reduce the attack surface area by locking down the device against a wide variety of attack vectors. It can help stop attacks that use fileless malware by:

• Mitigating kernel-memory exploits like EternalBlue through Hypervisor Code Integrity (HVCI), which makes it extremely difficult to inject malicious code using kernel-mode software vulnerabilities
• Mitigating user-mode memory exploits through the Exploit protection module, which consists of a number of exploit mitigations that can be applied either at the operating system level or at the individual app level
• Mitigating many script-based fileless techniques, among other techniques, through Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules that lock down application behavior

Tip On top of technical controls, it is important that administrative controls related to people and processes are also in place. The use of fileless techniques that rely on PowerShell and WMI on a remote victim machine requires that the adversary has privileged access to those machines. This may be due to poor administrative practices (for example, configuring a Windows service to run in the context of a domain admin account) that can enable credential theft. Read more about Securing Privileged Access.

Windows Defender Application Control

Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) offers a mechanism to enforce strong code Integrity policies and to allow only trusted applications to run. In the context of fileless malware, WDAC locks down PowerShell to Constrained Language Mode, which limits the extended language features that can lead to unverifiable code execution, such as direct .NET scripting, invocation of Win32 APIs via the Add-Type cmdlet, and interaction with COM objects. This essentially mitigates PowerShell-based reflective DLL injection attacks.

Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection

Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP) is the integrated platform for our Windows Endpoint Protection (EPP) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) capabilities. When it comes to post breach scenarios ATP alerts enterprise customers about highly sophisticated and advanced attacks on devices and corporate networks that other preventive protection features have been unable to defend against. It uses rich security data, advanced behavioral analytics, and machine learning to detect such attacks. It can help detect fileless malware in a number of ways, including:

• Exposing covert attacks that use fileless techniques like reflective DLL loading using specific instrumentations that detect abnormal memory allocations
• Detecting script-based fileless attacks by leveraging AMSI, which provides runtime inspection capability into PowerShell and other script-based malware, and applying machine learning models

Microsoft Edge

According to independent security tester NSS Labs, Microsoft Edge blocks more phishing sites and socially engineered malware than other browsers. Microsoft Edge mitigates fileless malware using arbitrary code protection capabilities, which can prevent arbitrary code, including malicious DLLs, from running. This helps mitigate reflective DLL loading attacks. In addition, Microsoft Edge offers a wide array of protections that mitigate threats, fileless or otherwise, using Windows Defender Application Guard integration and Windows Defender SmartScreen.

Windows 10 S

Windows 10 S is a special configuration of Windows 10 that combines many of the security features of Microsoft 365 automatically configured out of the box. It reduces attack surface by only allowing apps from the Microsoft Store. In the context of fileless malware, Windows 10 S has PowerShell Constrained Language Mode enabled by default. In addition, industry-best Microsoft Edge is the default browser, and Hypervisor Code Integrity (HVCI) is enabled by default.

 

Zaid Arafeh

Senior Program Manager, Windows Defender Research team

 

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Scripts are becoming the weapon of choice of sophisticated activity groups responsible for targeted attacks as well as malware authors who indiscriminately deploy commodity threats.

Scripting engines such as JavaScript, VBScript, and PowerShell offer tremendous benefits to attackers. They run through legitimate processes and are perfect tools for living off the landstaying away from the disk and using common tools to run code directly in memory. Often part of the operating system, scripting engines can evaluate and execute content from the internet on-the-fly. Furthermore, integration with popular apps make them effective vehicles for delivering malicious implants through social engineering as evidenced by the increasing use of scripts in spam campaigns.

Malicious scripts are not only used as delivery mechanisms. We see them in various stages of the kill chain, including during lateral movement and while establishing persistence. During these latter stages, the scripting engine of choice is clearly PowerShellthe de facto scripting standard for administrative tasks on Windowswith the ability to invoke system APIs and access a variety of system classes and objects.

While the availability of powerful scripting engines makes scripts convenient tools, the dynamic nature of scripts allows attackers to easily evade analysis and detection by antimalware and similar endpoint protection products. Scripts are easily obfuscated and can be loaded on-demand from a remote site or a key in the registry, posing detection challenges that are far from trivial.

Windows 10 provides optics into script behavior through Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI), a generic, open interface that enables Windows Defender Antivirus to look at script contents the same way script interpreters doin a form that is both unencrypted and unobfuscated. In Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, with knowledge from years analyzing script-based malware, weve added deep behavioral instrumentation to the Windows script interpreter itself, enabling it to capture system interactions originating from scripts. AMSI makes this detailed interaction information available to registered AMSI providers, such as Windows Defender Antivirus, enabling these providers to perform further inspection and vetting of runtime script execution content.

This unparalleled visibility into script behavior is capitalized further through other Windows 10 Fall Creators Update enhancements in both Windows Defender Antivirus and Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP). Both solutions make use of powerful machine learning algorithms that process the improved optics, with Windows Defender Antivirus delivering enhanced blocking of malicious scripts pre-breach and Windows Defender ATP providing effective behavior-based alerting for malicious post-breach script activity.

In this blog, we explore how Windows Defender ATP, in particular, makes use of AMSI inspection data to surface complex and evasive script-based attacks. We look at advanced attacks perpetrated by the highly skilled KRYPTON activity group and explore how commodity malware like Kovter abuses PowerShell to leave little to no trace of malicious activity on disk. From there, we look at how Windows Defender ATP machine learning systems make use of enhanced insight about script characteristics and behaviors to deliver vastly improved detection capabilities.

KRYPTON: Highlighting the resilience of script-based attacks

Traditional approaches for detecting potential breaches are quite file-centric. Incident responders often triage autostart entries, sorting out suspicious files by prevalence or unusual name-folder combinations. With modern attacks moving closer towards being completely fileless, it is crucial to have additional sensors at relevant choke points.

Apart from not having files on disk, modern script-based attacks often store encrypted malicious content separately from the decryption key. In addition, the final key often undergoes multiple processes before it is used to decode the actual payload, making it is impossible to make a determination based on a single file without tracking the actual invocation of the script. Even a perfect script emulator would fail this task.

For example, the activity group KRYPTON has been observed hijacking or creating scheduled tasksthey often target system tasks found in exclusion lists of popular forensic tools like Autoruns for Windows. KRYPTON stores the unique decryption key within the parameters of the scheduled task, leaving the actual payload content encrypted.

To illustrate KRYPTON attacks, we look at a tainted Microsoft Word document identified by John Lambert and the Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection team.

Figure 1. KRYPTON lure document

To live off the land, KRYPTON doesnt drop or carry over any traditional malicious binaries that typically trigger antimalware alerts. Instead, the lure document contains macros and uses the Windows Scripting Host (wscript.exe) to execute a JavaScript payload. This script payload executes only with the right RC4 decryption key, which is, as expected, stored as an argument in a scheduled task. Because it can only be triggered with the correct key introduced in the right order, the script payload is resilient against automated sandbox detonations and even manual inspection.

Figure 2. KRYPTON script execution chain through wscript.exe

Exposing actual script behavior with AMSI

AMSI overcomes KRYPTONs evasion mechanisms by capturing JavaScript API calls after they have been decrypted and ready to be executed by the script interpreter. The screenshot below shows part of the exposed content from the KRYPTON attack as captured by AMSI.

Figure 3. Part of the KRYPTON script payload captured by AMSI and sent to the cloud for analysis

By checking the captured script behavior against indicators of attack (IoAs) built up by human experts as well as machine learning algorithms, Windows Defender ATP effortlessly flags the KRYPTON scripts as malicious. At the same time, Windows Defender ATP provides meaningful contextual information, including how the script is triggered by a malicious Word document.

Figure 4. Windows Defender ATP machine learning detection of KRYPTON script captured by AMSI

PowerShell use by Kovter and other commodity malware

Not only advanced activity groups like KRYPTON are shifting from binary executables to evasive scripts. In the commodity space, Kovter malware uses several processes to eventually execute its malicious payload. This payload resides in a PowerShell script decoded by a JavaScript (executed by wscript.exe) and passed to powershell.exe as an environment variable.

Figure 5. Windows Defender ATP machine learning alert for the execution of the Kovter script-based payload

By looking at the PowerShell payload content captured by AMSI, experienced analysts can easily spot similarities to PowerSploit, a publicly available set of penetration testing modules. While such attack techniques involve file-based components, they remain extremely hard to detect using traditional methods because malicious activities occur only in memory. Such behavior, however, is effortlessly detected by Windows Defender ATP using machine learning that combines detailed AMSI signals with signals generated by PowerShell activity in general.

Figure 6. Part of the Kovter script payload captured by AMSI and sent to the cloud for analysis

Fresh machine learning insight with AMSI

While AMSI provides rich information from captured script content, the highly variant nature of malicious scripts continues to make them challenging targets for detection. To efficiently extract and identify new traits differentiating malicious scripts from benign ones, Windows Defender ATP employs advanced machine learning methods.

As outlined in our previous blog, we employ a supervised machine learning classifier to identify breach activity. We build training sets based on malicious behaviors observed in the wild and normal activities on typical machines, augmenting that with data from controlled detonations of malicious artifacts. The diagram below conceptually shows how we capture malicious behaviors in the form of process trees.

Figure 7. Process tree augmented by instrumentation for AMSI data

As shown in the process tree, the kill chain begins with a malicious document that causes Microsoft Word (winword.exe) to launch PowerShell (powershell.exe). In turn, PowerShell executes a heavily obfuscated script that drops and executes the malware fhjUQ72.tmp, which then obtains persistence by adding a run key to the registry. From the process tree, our machine learning systems can extract a variety of features to build expert classifiers for areas like registry modification and file creation, which are then converted into numeric scores that are used to decide whether to raise alerts.

With the instrumentation of AMSI signals added as part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709), Windows Defender ATP machine learning algorithms can now make use of insight into the unobfuscated script content while continually referencing machine state changes associated with process activity. Weve also built a variety of script-based models that inspect the nature of executed scripts, such as the count of obfuscation layers, entropy, obfuscation features, ngrams, and specific API invocations, to name a few.

As AMSI peels off the obfuscation layers, Windows Defender ATP benefits from growing visibility and insight into API calls, variable names, and patterns in the general structure of malicious scripts. And while AMSI data helps improve human expert knowledge and their ability to train learning systems, our deep neural networks automatically learn features that are often hidden from human analysts.

Figure 8. Machine learning detections of JavaScript and PowerShell scripts

While these new script-based machine learning models augment our expert classifiers, we also correlate new results with other behavioral information. For example, Windows Defender ATP correlates the detection of suspicious script contents from AMSI with other proximate behaviors, such as network connections. This contextual information is provided to SecOps personnel, helping them respond to incidents efficiently.

Figure 9. Machine learning combines VBScript content from AMSI and tracked network activity

Detection of AMSI bypass attempts

With AMSI providing powerful insight into malicious script activity, attacks are more likely to incorporate AMSI bypass mechanisms that we group into three categories:

• Bypasses that are part of the script content and can be inspected and alerted on
• Tampering with the AMSI sensor infrastructure, which might involve the replacement of system files or manipulation of the load order of relevant DLLs
• Patching of AMSI instrumentation in memory

The Windows Defender ATP research team proactively develops anti-tampering mechanisms for all our sensors. We have devised heuristic alerts for possible manipulation of our optics, designing these alerts so that they are triggered in the cloud before the bypass can suppress them.

During actual attacks involving CVE-2017-8759, Windows Defender ATP not only detected malicious post-exploitation scripting activity but also detected attempts to bypass AMSI using code similar to one identified by Matt Graeber.

Figure 10. Windows Defender ATP alert based on AMSI bypass pattern

AMSI itself captured the following bypass code for analysis in the Windows Defender ATP cloud.

Figure 11. AMSI bypass code sent to the cloud for analysis

Conclusion: Windows Defender ATP machine learning and AMSI provide revolutionary defense against highly evasive script-based attacks

Provided as an open interface on Windows 10, Antimalware Scan Interface delivers powerful optics into malicious activity hidden in encrypted and obfuscated scripts that are oftentimes never written to disk. Such evasive use of scripts is becoming commonplace and is being employed by both highly skilled activity groups and authors of commodity malware.

AMSI captures malicious script behavior by looking at script content as it is interpreted, without having to check physical files or being hindered by obfuscation, encryption, or polymorphism. At the endpoint, AMSI benefits local scanners, providing the necessary optics so that even obfuscated and encrypted scripts can be inspected for malicious content. Windows Defender Antivirus, specifically, utilizes AMSI to dynamically inspect and block scripts responsible for dropping all kinds of malicious payloads, including ransomware and banking trojans.

With Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709), newly added script runtime instrumentation provides unparalleled visibility into script behaviors despite obfuscation. Windows Defender Antivirus uses this treasure trove of behavioral information about malicious scripts to deliver pre-breach protection at runtime. To deliver post-breach defense, Windows Defender ATP uses advanced machine learning systems to draw deeper insight from this data.

Apart from looking at specific activities and patterns of activities, new machine learning algorithms in Windows Defender ATP look at script obfuscation layers, API invocation patterns, and other features that can be used to efficiently identify malicious scripts heuristically. Windows Defender ATP also correlates script-based indicators with other proximate activities, so it can deliver even richer contextual information about suspected breaches.

To benefit from the new script runtime instrumentation and other powerful security enhancements like Windows Defender Exploit Guard, customers are encourage to install Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Read the The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection from Forrester to understand the significant cost savings and business benefits enabled by Windows Defender ATP. To directly experience how Windows Defender ATP can help your enterprise detect, investigate, and respond to advance attacks, sign up for a free trial.

 

Stefan Sellmer, Windows Defender ATP Research

with

Shay Kels, Windows Defender ATP Research

Karthik Selvaraj, Windows Defender Research

 

Additional readings

• Defend against PowerShell attacks, by Lee Holmes and the PowerShell team
• Windows Defender ATP machine learning: Detecting new and unusual breach activity

 

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