NtGlobalFlag

Created the Monday 18 March 2019. Updated 6 months, 3 weeks ago.

The information that the system uses to determine how to create heap structures is stored at an undocumented location in the PEB at offset 0x68. If the value at this location is 0x70, we know that we are running in a debugger.

The NtGlobalFlag field of the Process Environment Block (0x68 offset on 32-Bit and 0xBC on 64-bit Windows) is 0 by default. Attaching a debugger doesn’t change the value of NtGlobalFlag. However, if the process was created by a debugger, the following flags will be set:

FLG_HEAP_ENABLE_TAIL_CHECK (0x10)
FLG_HEAP_ENABLE_FREE_CHECK (0x20)
FLG_HEAP_VALIDATE_PARAMETERS (0x40)

The presence of a debugger can be detected by checking a combination of those flags.

Technique Identifiers

U0111 B0001.036

Technique Tag

ntglobalflag

Featured Windows API's

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Code Snippets

#include &lt;Winternl.h&gt;
#include &lt;Windows.h&gt;
#include &lt;tchar.h&gt;
#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;

/*
*Using ZwQueryInformationProcess we get the PEB Address and 
*then we check the NtGlobalFlag to determine the process is being debugged or not.
*/

int main() {
     
    typedef unsigned long(__stdcall *pfnZwQueryInformationProcess)
    (
        IN  HANDLE,
        IN  unsigned int, 
        OUT PVOID, 
        IN  ULONG, 
        OUT PULONG
    );
    pfnZwQueryInformationProcess ZwQueryInfoProcess = NULL;
     
    HMODULE hNtDll = LoadLibrary(_T(&quot;ntdll.dll&quot;));
    if (hNtDll == NULL) { }
 
    ZwQueryInfoProcess = (pfnZwQueryInformationProcess) GetProcAddress(hNtDll,
        &quot;ZwQueryInformationProcess&quot;);
    if (ZwQueryInfoProcess == NULL) { }
    unsigned long status;
 
    DWORD pid = GetCurrentProcessId();
    HANDLE hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION, FALSE, pid);
    PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION pbi;
    status = ZwQueryInfoProcess(hProcess,
                                ProcessBasicInformation,
                                &amp;pbi,
                                sizeof(pbi),
                                NULL);
                                 
    PPEB peb_addr = pbi.PebBaseAddress;
    DWORD ptr = pbi.PebBaseAddress;
    ptr|=104;
    DWORD *temp = ptr;
    MessageBox(0, *temp ? &quot;Debugger found&quot; : &quot;Debugger not found&quot;,&quot;Status&quot;,0x30);
     
    return 0;
}

Detection Rules

                                    rule DebuggerCheck__GlobalFlags  {
    meta:
	description = "Rule to detect NtGlobalFlags debugger check"
        author = "Thibault Seret"
        date = "2020-09-26"
    strings:
        $s1 = "NtGlobalFlags"
    condition:
        any of them
}

                                    rule:
  meta:
    name: check for PEB NtGlobalFlag flag
    namespace: anti-analysis/anti-debugging/debugger-detection
    author: moritz.raabe@fireeye.com
    scope: function
    mbc:
      - Anti-Behavioral Analysis::Debugger Detection::Process Environment Block NtGlobalFlag [B0001.036]
    references:
      - Practical Malware Analysis, Chapter 16, p. 355
      - https://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/win32/ntdll/structs/peb/index.htm
    examples:
      - Practical Malware Analysis Lab 16-01.exe_:0x403530
  features:
    - and:
      - basic block:
        - and:
          - match: PEB access
          - or:
            - or:
              - offset/x32: 0x68 = PEB.NtGlobalFlag
              - offset/x64: 0xBC = PEB.NtGlobalFlag
            - and:
              - mnemonic: add
              - or:
                - number/x32: 0x68 = PEB.NtGlobalFlag
                - number/x64: 0xBC = PEB.NtGlobalFlag
      - number: 0x70 = (FLG_HEAP_ENABLE_TAIL_CHECK | FLG_HEAP_ENABLE_FREE_CHECK | FLG_HEAP_VALIDATE_PARAMETERS)

Additional Resources

External Links

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