Hunting for Malware Critical Process Impersonation

Introduction

Malware is a constant threat to organizations of all sizes, and one of the most insidious tactics employed by malware is process impersonation. By impersonating critical processes, malware can evade detection and allow attackers to carry out their malicious activities undetected. Hunting for malware critical process impersonation is a proactive approach to security that can help organizations detect and prevent these types of attacks.

Malware Critical Process Impersonation

Malware can use process impersonation to make itself look like a legitimate process or service, which can help it evade detection by security tools. For example, malware might impersonate a critical process like svchost.exe or explorer.exe. When a security tool tries to identify malicious activity on a system, it may overlook the malware because it looks like a legitimate process.

Hunting for Malware Critical Process Impersonation

To detect malware critical process impersonation, security teams can use a combination of threat intelligence, endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, and manual analysis. One effective method for hunting malware critical process impersonation is to focus on the following TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures):

1. Analyze process trees: By analyzing the process tree on a system, security teams can identify any abnormal processes and determine if they are impersonating legitimate processes.
2. Look for code injection: Malware often uses code injection to execute its code within a legitimate process. By analyzing the memory of a process, security teams can identify if any malicious code has been injected.
3. Monitor for network activity: Malware needs to communicate with a command and control (C2) server to receive commands and exfiltrate data. By monitoring network activity, security teams can identify any suspicious communication from an impersonated process.

Example

Let’s consider an example of how hunting for malware critical process impersonation can be used to detect and prevent a cyber attack.

An organization’s security team receives a threat intelligence report that a new strain of malware is using process impersonation to evade detection. The report indicates that the malware is impersonating the critical process svchost.exe.

The security team decides to use their EDR tool to analyze the process tree and memory of svchost.exe on all endpoints. They discover that on one endpoint, svchost.exe has spawned a child process that is running an unknown executable. By analyzing the memory of this process, the security team determines that it is indeed malware that has injected its code into the legitimate process.

The security team quarantines the infected endpoint and uses the EDR tool to identify any other endpoints that are exhibiting the same behavior. By using the hunting methodology described above, the security team is able to detect and prevent the spread of malware throughout the organization.

Conclusion

Hunting for malware critical process impersonation is a proactive approach to security that can help organizations detect and prevent cyber attacks. By using a combination of threat intelligence, EDR tools, and manual analysis, security teams can identify and respond to malware that is using process impersonation to evade detection. By focusing on the TTPs described above, organizations can improve their threat informed detection and response readiness and stay one step ahead of the attackers.