Infection by Localisation

Created the Monday 18 March 2019. Updated 1 month, 1 week ago.

Some malware are designed to only infect, and target machines located in certain geographic regions. This can be done using various techniques, such as checking the IP address of the machine to determine its location or using language-specific keywords in the malware code.

By limiting the scope of their attacks to specific geographic regions, attackers can avoid detection and prosecution by law enforcement agencies in other countries. This is often the case in Ransomware.

Technique Identifier

U1006

Technique Tags

geographic regions IP address machine location language-specific keywords government protection malicious activities country borders

Code Snippets

Description

In this code, the IsLanguageInstalled function is used to check if the specified language, indicated by its LCID (Language Code Identifier), is installed on the system. In this case, the malware could check the languages installed on a Windows machine and not run if Russian is present.

#include <Windows.h>
#include <winreg.h>

#define LANG_KEY "SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Nls\\Language"
#define RUSSIAN_LCID 1049

// Check if the specified LCID is installed on the system
bool IsLanguageInstalled(LCID lcid)
{
  HKEY hKey;
  if (RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, LANG_KEY, 0, KEY_READ, &hKey) == ERROR_SUCCESS)
  {
    DWORD dwIndex = 0;
    WCHAR szValueName[32];
    DWORD dwValueNameLen = sizeof(szValueName);
    while (RegEnumValue(hKey, dwIndex++, szValueName, &dwValueNameLen, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) == ERROR_SUCCESS)
    {
      LCID lcidValue = _wtoi(szValueName);
      if (lcidValue == lcid)
      {
        RegCloseKey(hKey);
        return true;
      }
    }
    RegCloseKey(hKey);
  }
  return false;
}

int main()
{
  if (IsLanguageInstalled(RUSSIAN_LCID))
  {
    // Russian language is installed, do not run malware
    return 0;
  }
  else
  {
    // Russian language is not installed, run malware
    // ...
  }
  return 0;
}

Additional Resources

External Links

The resources provided below are associated links that will give you even more detailed information and research on current evasion technique. It is important to note that, while these resources may be helpful, it is important to exercise caution when following external links. As always, be careful when clicking on links from unknown sources, as they may lead to malicious content.

https://www.vmray.com/cyber-security-blog/sandbox-evasion-techniques-part-4/