FireEye Labs Research Outlines Techniques Malware Authors Use to Evade File-Based Sandboxes
Report Leverages Multi-Flow Analysis to Detect Latest Evasion Methods
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BANGALORE, India - August 5, 2013
FireEye®, Inc., the leader in stopping today's new breed of cyber attacks, today released a new report titled, "Hot Knives Through Butter: How Malware Evades Automated File-based Sandboxes," that reveals several techniques used by advanced malware to sidestep signature-based defenses during attacks. Today's sophisticated, polymorphic malware is able to hide, replicate, and disable host protections using a variety of techniques, rendering single-flow, file-based sandbox solutions ineffective.
"In today's threat landscape, traditional sandboxes no longer offer a silver bullet against sophisticated attackers," said Zheng Bu, Senior Director of Research and Co-Author of the Report. "Malware is increasingly able to determine when it is running in a virtual environment and alter its behavior to avoid detection. Effective detection requires analyzing the context of behavior and correlating disparate phases of an attack through multi-flow analysis - which is how our researchers identified the malware samples outlined in this paper."
The FireEye Labs research team leveraged the company's Multi-Vector Virtual Execution (MVX) engine's signature-less, dynamic, real-time detection capability to identify new evasion techniques.
The FireEye report outlines the methodologies malware authors are using to evade file-based sandboxes, which typically fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Human Interaction: Malware that involves human interaction lies dormant until it detects signs of human interaction. The Up Clicker Trojan discovered by FireEye in December 2012 used mouse clicks to detect human activity, establishing communication with malicious CnC servers only after detecting a click of the left mouse button.
- Configuration: Sandboxes mimic the physical computers they are protecting, yet they are still configured to a defined set of parameters. Most sandboxes only monitor files for a few minutes before moving on to the next file. Therefore, cybercriminals simply wait out the sandbox and attack after the monitoring process is completed.
- Environment: Malware often seeks to exploit flaws present only in specific versions of an application. If a predefined configuration within a sandbox lacks a particular combination of operating system and applications, some malware will not execute, evading detection.
- Classic VMware Evasion Techniques: VMware, a popular virtual-machine tool, is particularly easy to identify because of its distinctive configuration, which proves useful to malware writers. For example, VMWare's distinctive configuration allows malware to check for VMWare services before executing.
Understanding the techniques malware authors are using to evade detection from file-based sandboxes will allow security professionals to better identify the potential for an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attack.
To download the full report, "Hot Knives Through Butter: Evading Automated File-based Sandboxes" please click here.
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About FireEye, Inc.
FireEye is the leader in stopping next-generation threats, such as zero-day and APT attacks, that bypass traditional defenses and compromise over 95 percent of networks. The FireEye solution supplements signature-based firewalls, IPS, anti-virus, and gateways, and provide the world's only cross-enterprise, signature-less protection against Web and email threat vectors as well as malware resident on file shares. It is the industry's only integrated solution that stops attacks across every stage of an attack lifecycle, from exploit to exfiltration. Using its patented Virtual Execution technology platform across its portfolio, FireEye is uniquely able to protect against next-generation threats. FireEye solutions are deployed in over 40 countries and more than 25 percent of the Fortune 100.
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