Parent Process Detection Anti-Monitoring

Parent process is a technique used by malware to evade detection by security analysts. The parent process of a given process is the process that spawned it.

For example, most user processes on a Windows system have explorer.exe as their parent process. By checking the parent process of a given process, malware can determine whether it is being monitored …

NOP Sled Anti-Disassembly

In computer security, a NOP slide is a sequence of NOP (no-operation) instructions that is inserted at the beginning of a code section. When a program branches to the start of this code section, it will "slide" through the NOP instructions until it reaches the desired, final destination. This technique is commonly used in software exploits to direct program execution …

Access Token Manipulation: Parent PID Spoofing Process Manipulating Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may spoof the parent process identifier (PPID) of a new process to evade process-monitoring defenses or to elevate privileges. New processes are typically spawned directly from their parent, or calling, process unless explicitly specified.

One way of explicitly assigning the PPID of a new process is via the CreateProcess API call, which supports a parameter that defines the …

Hide Artifacts: Process Argument Spoofing Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may attempt to hide process command-line arguments by overwriting process memory. Process command-line arguments are stored in the process environment block (PEB), a data structure used by Windows to store various information about/used by a process. The PEB includes the process command-line arguments that are referenced when executing the process. When a process is created, defensive tools/sensors that monitor …

Process Injection: Process Hollowing Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may inject malicious code into suspended and hollowed processes in order to evade process-based defenses. Process hollowing is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

Process hollowing is commonly performed by creating a process in a suspended state then unmapping/hollowing its memory, which can then be replaced with malicious code. …

Process Injection: Process Doppelgänging Defense Evasion [Mitre]

Adversaries may inject malicious code into process via process doppelgänging in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. Process doppelgänging is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

Windows Transactional NTFS (TxF) was introduced in Vista as a method to perform safe file operations. To ensure data …

Cronos-Crypter Packers

Cronos-Crypter is an open-source crypter publicly available on GitHub. The crypter applies AES encryption or XOR obfuscation to a selected payload before storing it as a .NET resource of a final generated .NET executable payload. Cronos-Crypter contains multiple capabilties for persistence and defense evasion. An operator may select persistence via a Windows Registry autorun key or a Scheduled Task. An …

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