Obfuscated Files or Information: Stripped Payloads Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may attempt to make a payload difficult to analyze by removing symbols, strings, and other human readable information. Scripts and executables may contain variables names and other strings that help developers document code functionality. Symbols are often created by an operating system’s linker when executable payloads are compiled. Reverse engineers use these symbols and strings to analyze code and …

Obfuscated Files or Information: Embedded Payloads Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may embed payloads within other files to conceal malicious content from defenses. Otherwise seemingly benign files (such as scripts and executables) may be abused to carry and obfuscate malicious payloads and content. In some cases, embedded payloads may also enable adversaries to Subvert Trust Controls by not impacting execution controls such as digital signatures and notarization tickets.

Adversaries …

Cryptography Data Obfuscation

Cryptography is a technique often used by malware to protect against analysis or to perform malicious actions such as in ransomware attacks. In these cases, malware will use cryptography to encrypt their payloads or communication channels in order to make it difficult for security tools and forensic investigators to detect and analyze their activities.

Additionally, cryptography can be used …

Custom Encoding Data Obfuscation

Malware often uses custom encoding schemes to conceal their payloads and avoid detection. These custom schemes can be full custom layers, or they can be variations of known algorithms such as XOR or Base64. Using custom encoding schemes allows malware to encode their payloads in a unique way that can be difficult for security tools and forensic investigators to detect.

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Execution Guardrails: Environmental Keying Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may environmentally key payloads or other features of malware to evade defenses and constraint execution to a specific target environment. Environmental keying uses cryptography to constrain execution or actions based on adversary supplied environment specific conditions that are expected to be present on the target. Environmental keying is an implementation of Execution Guardrails that utilizes cryptographic techniques for deriving …

Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Search Order Hijacking Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking the search order used to load DLLs. Windows systems use a common method to look for required DLLs to load into a program. Hijacking DLL loads may be for the purpose of establishing persistence as well as elevating privileges and/or evading restrictions on file execution.

There are many ways an …

Hijack Execution Flow: Path Interception by PATH Environment Variable Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking environment variables used to load libraries. Adversaries may place a program in an earlier entry in the list of directories stored in the PATH environment variable, which Windows will then execute when it searches sequentially through that PATH listing in search of the binary that was called from a script or …

Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may match or approximate the name or location of legitimate files or resources when naming/placing them. This is done for the sake of evading defenses and observation. This may be done by placing an executable in a commonly trusted directory (ex: under System32) or giving it the name of a legitimate, trusted program (ex: svchost.exe). In containerized environments, this …

Obfuscated Files or Information: Software Packing Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may perform software packing or virtual machine software protection to conceal their code. Software packing is a method of compressing or encrypting an executable. Packing an executable changes the file signature in an attempt to avoid signature-based detection. Most decompression techniques decompress the executable code in memory. Virtual machine software protection translates an executable's original code into a special …

Obfuscated Files or Information: Steganography Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may use steganography techniques in order to prevent the detection of hidden information. Steganographic techniques can be used to hide data in digital media such as images, audio tracks, video clips, or text files.

Duqu was an early example of malware that used steganography. It encrypted the gathered information from a victim's system and hid it within an …

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