Fingerprinting Emulator Antivirus/EDR Evasion

Fingerprinting the AV emulator can allow the malware to detect the AV. For example, specific mutex can be used by the AV emulator, trying to detect it allow the sample to detect the AV.

Big File Antivirus/EDR Evasion

Because of the imposed file size limit, you can trick the scanner into skipping a file by changing the file’s size to make it larger than the hard-coded size limit. This file size limit applies especially with heuristic engines based on static data (data extracted from the portable executable, or PE, header). This is an old trick still apply in …

File Format Confusion Antivirus/EDR Evasion

By looking the structure of the PE and the content of the file, the engine is able to detect if the file is malicious or not. For example, an heuristic engine can try to figure out if a file are using a dual extension (e.g: invoice.doc.exe) and determine the file as being malicious.

Confusing file format is another trick …

Bypassing Static Heuristic Antivirus/EDR Evasion

Dynamic heuristic engines are implemented in the form of hooks (in user-land or kernel-land) or based on emulation. User-land hooks (HIPS) can be easily bypass by malware by patching back the entry point of the hooked function. For kernel-land hook, malware has to run in kernel space by installing a driver or abusing a kernel-level vulnerability.

NtSetInformationThread Anti-Debugging

NtSetInformationThread can be used to hide threads from debuggers using the ThreadHideFromDebugger ThreadInfoClass (0x11 / 17). This is intended to be used by an external process, but any thread can use it on itself.

After the thread is hidden from the debugger, it will continue running but the debugger won’t receive events related to this thread. …

OutputDebugString Anti-Debugging

This Windows API is often used by developers for debugging purpose. It will display a text to the attached debugger. This API is also used by Malware to open a communication channel between one or multiple processes.

It is possible to use OutputDebugString in addition of GetLastError / SetLastError to detect debugger presence.

CsrGetProcessID Anti-Debugging

This function is undocumented within OpenProcess. It can be used to get the PID of CRSS.exe, which is a SYSTEM process. By default, a process has the SeDebugPrivilege privilege in their access token disabled.

However, when the process is loaded by a debugger such as OllyDbg or WinDbg, the SeDebugPrivilege privilege is enabled. If a process is able …

CloseHandle, NtClose Anti-Debugging

When a process is debugged, calling NtClose or CloseHandle with an invalid handle will generate a STATUS_INVALID_HANDLE exception.

The exception can be cached by an exception handler. If the control is passed to the exception handler, it indicates that a debugger is present.

Heap Flag Anti-Debugging

ProcessHeap is located at 0x18 in the PEB structure. This first heap contains a header with fields used to tell the kernel whether the heap was created within a debugger. The heap contains two fields which are affected by the presence of a debugger. These fields are Flags and ForceFlags.

The values of Flags and ForceFlags are normally …

RDTSC Anti-Debugging

The Read-Time-Stamp-Counter (RDTSC) instruction can be used by malware to determine how quicky the processor executes the program's instructions. It returns the count of the number of ticks since the last system reboot as a 64-bit value placed into EDX:EAX.

It will execute RDTSC twice and then calculate the difference between low order values and check it with …

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