Sysmon and Alternate Data Streams, (Mon, Jun 29th)

Sysmon version 11.10, released a couple of days ago, adds support for capturing content of Alternate Data Streams.

ISC Stormcast For Monday, June 29th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7058, (Mon, Jun 29th)


tcp-honeypot.py Logstash Parser & Dashboard Update, (Sun, Jun 28th)

This is an update for logstash and dashboard published in January for Didier's tcp-honeypot.py honeypot script. The parser has been updated to follow the Elastic Common Schema (ECE) format, parsing more information from the honeypot logs that include revised and additional dashboards.

Video: YARA's BASE64 Strings, (Sat, Jun 27th)

In diary entry YARA's BASE64 Strings, I explain the new BASE64 feature in YARA (we're at version 4.0.2 now).

Share the Mic in Cyber, (Fri, Jun 26th)

ISC Stormcast For Friday, June 26th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7056, (Fri, Jun 26th)

Tech Tuesday Recap / Recordings: Part 2 (Installing the Honeypot) release., (Thu, Jun 25th)

As mentioned during our "Tech Tuesday" session, the session itself was not recorded. Instead, I will be releasing three "stand alone" videos covering the major parts of the workshop.

ISC Stormcast For Thursday, June 25th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7054, (Thu, Jun 25th)

Using Shell Links as zero-touch downloaders and to initiate network connections, (Wed, Jun 24th)

Probably anyone who has used any modern version of Windows is aware of their file-based shortcuts, also known as LNKs or Shell Link files. Although they were intended as a simple feature to make Windows a bit more user-friendly, over the years, a significant number[1] of vulnerabilities were identified in handling of LNKs. Many of these vulnerabilities lead to remote code execution and one (CVE-2010-2568) was even used in creation of the Stuxnet worm.

VMware security advisory VMSA-2020-0015, (Wed, Jun 24th)

VMware issued a new security advisory yesterday - VMSA-2020-0015[1]. It covers patches (in some cases still pending) for 10 different CVEs with a use-after-free vulnerability in ESXi, Workstation and Fusion being the most important one (CVSSv3 base score of 9.3).

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, June 24th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7052, (Wed, Jun 24th)

Cyberbunker 2.0: Analysis of the Remnants of a Bullet Proof Hosting Provider, (Mon, Jun 22nd)

This post was written by SANS.edu graduate student Karim Lalji in cooperation with Johannes Ullrich.

ISC Stormcast For Tuesday, June 23rd 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7050, (Tue, Jun 23rd)

Comparing Office Documents with WinMerge, (Mon, Jun 22nd)

Sometimes I have to compare the internals of Office documents (OOXML files, e.g. ZIP container with XML files, …). Since they are ZIP containers, I have to compare the files within. I used to do this with with zipdump.py tool, but recently, I started to use WinMerge because of its graphical user interface.

ISC Stormcast For Monday, June 22nd 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7048, (Mon, Jun 22nd)

ISC Handler Series: SANS@MIC - Maldocs: a bit of blue, a bit of red, (Sun, Jun 21st)

This week, I presented at SANSFIRE: SANS@MIC - Maldocs: a bit of blue, a bit of red.

Pi Zero HoneyPot , (Sat, Jun 20th)

The ISC has had a Pi honeypot(1) for the last couple of years, but I haven't had much time to try it on the Pi zero. Recently, I've had a chance to try it out, and it works great. 

Sigma rules! The generic signature format for SIEM systems., (Fri, Jun 19th)

What Snort is to network traffic, and YARA to files, is Sigma to logs. By creating and using Sigma rules you’ll have generic rules which can be shared and run against different targets (e.g. SIEMs).

ISC Stormcast For Friday, June 19th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7046, (Fri, Jun 19th)

Broken phishing accidentally exploiting Outlook zero-day, (Thu, Jun 18th)

When we think of zero-days, what comes to mind are usually RCEs or other high-impact vulnerabilities. Zero-days, however, come in all shapes and sizes and many of them are low impact, as is the vulnerability we’re going to discuss today. What is interesting about it, apart from it allowing a sender of an e-mail to include/change a link in an e-mail when it is forwarded by Outlook, is that I noticed it being exploited in a low-quality phishing e-mail by what appears to be a complete accident.

ISC Stormcast For Thursday, June 18th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7044, (Thu, Jun 18th)

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, June 17th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7042, (Wed, Jun 17th)

Odd "Protest" Spam (Scam?) Targeting Atlanta Police Foundation, (Tue, Jun 16th)

After the killing of Rayshard Brooks by Atlanta police this week, a lot of protests and anger was directed at the Atlanta police department and its officers. Yesterday, we received an odd spam message, that may be targeting the Atlanta Police Foundation. The Atlanta Police Foundation is a not-for-profit organization collecting funding for various causes related to the Atlanta police. The Atlanta Police Foundation has been quoted in several news reports regarding the low morale of officers and officer resignation. It is no surprise that it is within scope for protests online.

Sextortion to The Next Level, (Tue, Jun 16th)

For a long time, our mailboxes are flooded with emails from “hackers” (note the quotes) who pretend to have infected our computers with malware. The scenario is always the same: They successfully collected sensitive pieces of evidence about us (usually, men visiting adult websites) and request some money to be paid in Bitcoins or they will disclose everything. We already reported this kind of malicious activity for the first time in 2018[1]. Attacks evolved with time and they improved their communication by adding sensitive information like a real password (grabbed from major data leaks) or mobile phones.

ISC Stormcast For Tuesday, June 16th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7040, (Tue, Jun 16th)

HTML based Phishing Run, (Mon, Jun 15th)

An intresting phishing run started over the weekend.  At first glance it looks pretty typical...a clumsy email with an attachment with some vital and useful information.  Although I have already seen several different message bodies, this is one sample:

VMWare Security Advisory - VMSA-2020-0013 - https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2020-0013.html, (Mon, Jun 15th)

-- Rick Wanner MSISE - rwanner at isc dot sans dot edu - http://namedeplume.blogspot.com/ - Twitter:namedeplume (Protected)

ISC Stormcast For Monday, June 15th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7038, (Mon, Jun 15th)

YARA's BASE64 Strings, (Sun, Jun 14th)

Since YARA version 4.0.0, Victor added support for detecting BASE64 encoded strings.

Mirai Botnet Activity, (Sat, Jun 13th)

This past week, I noticed new activity from the Mirai botnet in my honeypot. The sample log with the IP and file associated with the first log appears to have been taken down (96.30.193.26) which appeared multiple times this week including today. However, the last two logs from today are still active which is using a Bash script to download multiple exploits targeting various device types (MIPS, ARM4-7, MPSL, x86, PPC, M68k). Something else of interest is the User-Agent: XTC and the name viktor which appear to be linked to XTC IRC Botnet, aka Hoaxcalls.

Malicious Excel Delivering Fileless Payload, (Fri, Jun 12th)

Macros in Office documents are so common today that my honeypots and hunting scripts catch a lot of them daily. I try to keep an eye on them because sometimes you can spot an interesting one (read: “using a less common technique”).  Yesterday, I found such a sample that deserve a quick diary!

ISC Stormcast For Friday, June 12th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7036, (Fri, Jun 12th)

Anti-Debugging JavaScript Techniques, (Thu, Jun 11th)

For developers who write malicious programs, it’s important to make their code not easy to be read and executed in a sandbox. Like most languages, there are many ways to make the life of malware analysts mode difficult (or more exciting, depending on the side of the table you’re sitting ;-).

ISC Stormcast For Thursday, June 11th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7034, (Thu, Jun 11th)

Job application-themed malspam pushes ZLoader, (Wed, Jun 10th)

Introduction

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, June 10th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7032, (Wed, Jun 10th)

Microsoft June 2020 Patch Tuesday, (Tue, Jun 9th)

This month we got patches for 130 vulnerabilities. Of these, 12 are critical and none of them was previously disclosed or is being exploited according to Microsoft. 

ISC Stormcast For Tuesday, June 9th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7030, (Tue, Jun 9th)

Translating BASE64 Obfuscated Scripts, (Mon, Jun 8th)

I often get requests for help with deobfuscating scripts. I have several tools that can help.

ISC Stormcast For Monday, June 8th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7028, (Mon, Jun 8th)

Cyber Security for Protests, (Fri, Jun 5th)

Modern-day protests are as much about social media and voicing your opinions online, as they are about showing up "in person". When attending a protest, it is important to keep some basic rules in mind to stay secure. Of course, it is always best to leave expensive electronics at home, but live streaming, posting to social media, and recording events at the protest is very much a part of modern protests. The other option is to only take a relatively cheap "burner phone" with you that does not have any of your personal data associated with it. But even a cheap, but reasonably functional phone will be too expensive for most.

Not so FastCGI!, (Fri, Jun 5th)

This past month, we've seen some new and different scans targeting tcp ports between 8000 and 10,000. The first occurrence was on 30 April 2020 and originated from ip address %%ip:23.95.67.187%% and containing payload:

ISC Stormcast For Friday, June 5th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7026, (Fri, Jun 5th)

Suspending Suspicious Domain Feed / Update to Researcher IP Feed, (Thu, Jun 4th)

Yesterday, Peter from DNSFilter send us a message noting that many of the domains in our "Suspicious Domain" feed no longer resolved, and some of the feeds we used as input were no longer maintained. After investigating, I have to agree with him. The remaining feeds don't make a valuable service at this point. The idea of the "Suspicious Domain" list was to aggregate different lists, but with essentially only 1 or 2 lists left, that doesn't make sense and I decided to no longer maintain the feed until we find new inputs. The respective files will still be offered by they are empty to not break any existing scripts that use them (they are quite popular).

Anti-Debugging Technique based on Memory Protection, (Thu, Jun 4th)

Many modern malware samples implement defensive techniques. First of all, we have to distinguish sandbox-evasion and anti-debugging techniques. Today, sandboxes are an easy and quick way to categorize samples based on their behavior. Malware developers have plenty of tests to perform to detect the environment running their code. There are plenty of them, some examples: testing the disk size, the desktop icons, the uptime, processes, network interfaces MAC addresses, hostnames, etc.

ISC Stormcast For Thursday, June 4th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7024, (Thu, Jun 4th)

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, June 3rd 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7022, (Wed, Jun 3rd)

Polish malspam pushes ZLoader malware, (Thu, Jun 4th)

Introduction

Stackstrings, type 2, (Mon, Jun 1st)

Update 1: Added disassembler output.

ISC Stormcast For Tuesday, June 2nd 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7020, (Tue, Jun 2nd)

XLMMacroDeobfuscator: An Update, (Mon, Jun 1st)

XLMMacroDeobfuscator is an open-source tool to deobfuscate Excel 4 macros. I wrote diary entries about it here and here.

ISC Stormcast For Monday, June 1st 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7018, (Mon, Jun 1st)

Windows 10 Built-in Packet Sniffer - PktMon, (Sun, May 31st)

Microsoft released with the October 2018 Update a built-in packet sniffer for Windows 10 located in C:\Windows\system32\PktMon.exe. At ISC we like packets and this is one of the multiple ways to capture packets and send us a copy for analysis. Rob previously published another way of capturing packets in Windows here. If Windows 10 was compromised, this application would be a prime target by malicious actors and it need to be monitored, protected or removed in an enterprise.

YARA v4.0.1, (Sat, May 30th)

A couple of weeks ago, YARA 4.0.0. was released with support for BASE64 strings.

The Impact of Researchers on Our Data, (Fri, May 29th)

Researchers have been using various tools to perform internet-wide scans for many years. Some will publish data continuously to either notify users of infected or misconfigured systems. Others will use the data to feed internal proprietary systems, or publish occasional research papers.

ISC Stormcast For Friday, May 29th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7016, (Fri, May 29th)

Flashback on CVE-2019-19781, (Thu, May 28th)

First of all, did you know that the Flame[1] malware turned 8 years today! Happy Birthday! This famous malware discovered was announced on May 28th, 2012. The malware was used for targeted cyber espionage activities in the Middle East area. If this malware was probably developed by a nation-state organization. It infected a limited amount of hosts (~1000 computers[3]) making it a targeted attack.

ISC Stormcast For Thursday, May 28th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7014, (Thu, May 28th)

Frankenstein's phishing using Google Cloud Storage, (Wed, May 27th)

Phishing e-mail messages and/or web pages are often unusual in one way or another from the technical standpoint – some are surprisingly sophisticated, while others are incredibly simple, and sometimes they are a very strange mix of the two. The latter was the case with an e-mail, which our company e-mail gateway caught last week – some aspects of it appeared to be professionally done, but others screamed that the author was a “beginner” at best.

ISC Stormcast For Wednesday, May 27th 2020 https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=7012, (Wed, May 27th)