TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024
Logging for Hackers - What you need to know to catch them
1. Logging for Hackers
How you can catch them with what
you already have and a walk through
of an actual attack and how we
caught it
Michael Gough – Founder
MalwareArchaeology.com
MalwareArchaeology.com
2. Who am I
• 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
MalwareArchaeology.com
4. • We discovered this
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
5. Malware evolves
• So must we
• Darwin says so
• Evolve or die
• Well… Evolve or get breached anyways
• Getting breached means an RGE !!!
– Resume Generating Event
MalwareArchaeology.com
9. DBIR 2016
MalwareArchaeology.com 9
• Fraud and Internal
detection going
down
• The dreaded 3rd
party call and Law
Enforcement
notifications going
up
13. 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
14. A quick look at
Advanced Malware
Artifacts
MalwareArchaeology.com
15. Winnti - Malware Infection
15
Malware
Launch
Hiding malware
in the Registry
Modify Service
16. Escalate permissions
obvious NOT your admin
16
Check the Service used
Modify
Permissions
Push out malware using CMD Shell &
CScript
17. Using the Registry for storage
17
Update Registry
Change Registry
Permissions
Change permissions on
files
18. Bad behavior becomes obvious
18
Doing Recon
Going after Terminal
Services
Query Users
19. You can even capture their Credentials
19
Caught THEIR
Credentials!
20. Persistence
• Avoided leaving key files behind like they did
before, well one anyways… the persistence
piece
MalwareArchaeology.com
22. 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
MalwareArchaeology.com
• We tried the infector on several
other system files and it worked
24. A quick look at
Commodity Malware
Artifacts
MalwareArchaeology.com
25. Angler delivered Kovtar
• 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)
MalwareArchaeology.com
27. 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
MalwareArchaeology.com
31. Where to start
• What am I suppose to set?
• Where do I get more information?
“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
MalwareArchaeology.com
32. PowerShell
• It’s coming… in a BIG way, it’s 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
MalwareArchaeology.com
34. So what do we do???
• It is the “SHOW ME” state
• So here it is
• The “Windows PowerShell Logging Cheat Sheet”
• Designed to catch the folks I just mentioned, and others ;-)
• Get it at:
– MalwareArchaeology.com
MalwareArchaeology.com
36. How to catch this stuff
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)
• Scripts too
MalwareArchaeology.com
37. And this query
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
MalwareArchaeology.com
38. So how do you do this?
• Malware Management allowed us to setup
alerts on artifacts from other malware analysis
• 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
MalwareArchaeology.com
39. What we 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 - 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
MalwareArchaeology.com
40. So what did we
take away
from all of this?
MalwareArchaeology.com
41. You have 3 options
• Do nothing – Eventually 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?
MalwareArchaeology.com
42. It didn’t exist
So we created it!
So you can do it too!
MalwareArchaeology.com
44. MalwareArchaeology.com
• 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
45. Functions
MalwareArchaeology.com
• 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)
• Report.csv - data from logs specific to security
46. Purpose
MalwareArchaeology.com
• 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)
• SPEED !
• 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 !
47. Free Edition
MalwareArchaeology.com
• Audit your settings – Do you comply?
• Harvest security relevant log data
• Whitelist log events by IP, Cmd Line, Process and
File / Registry audit locations
• Perform a full File 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
48. MalwareArchaeology.com
• Everything the Free Edition does and…
• More reports, breakdown of things to look for
• 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
49. MalwareArchaeology.com
Future Versions – In the works!
• PowerShell details
• 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
54. Use the power of Excel
MalwareArchaeology.com
• 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++
55. So what do we get?
MalwareArchaeology.com
• 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!
56. Resources
MalwareArchaeology.com
• 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
57. Questions?
MalwareArchaeology.com
You can find us at:
• Log-MD.com
• @HackerHurricane
• @Boettcherpwned
• MalwareArchaeology.com
• HackerHurricane.com (blog)
• http://www.slideshare.net – LinkedIn now