Logging for hackers SAINTCON

Searching Logs for Hackers, what you need to know to catch them

Michael Gough – FounderMalwareArchaeology.com

Co-creator of

MalwareArchaeology.com

•SAINTCON - Searching Logs for Hackers, what you need to know to catch them

Who am I

• Blue Team Defender Ninja, Malware Archaeologist, Logoholic

• I love “properly” configured logs – they tell us Who, What, Where, When and hopefully How

Creator of

• Malware Management Framework

• Several Windows Logging Cheat Sheets

• Co-Creator of “Log-MD” – Log Malicious Discovery Tool

– With @Boettcherpwned – Brakeing Down Security PodCast• @BrakeSec

• @HackerHurricane and also my Blog


• We discovered this in May 2012

• Met with the Feds ;-)

Why you should listen to me?

2014 - We gave an infected VM to one of the Big IR Firms… They came back “Yup.. It’s clean” #Fail


And because you want to catch these guys… or worse

• Ben Ten (Not PowerShell)

• Carlos (MetaSploit)

• Dave (SET)

• Kevin too (Pen Tester)


Malware evolves

• So must we

• Darwin says so

• Evolve or die

• Well… Evolve or get breached anyways

• Getting breached means an RGE !!!– Resume Generating Event


A quick look at

STATS


DBIR 2016

• Why we are here…

7

Time it takes hackers to compromise you

Time it takes hackers to steal your data

GOAL To catch them BEFORE data loss occurs


DBIR 2016

Hackers time to Compromise is getting faster

Than our ability to Discover them


Chasing Hashes

• Malware hashes are no longer similar

• Malware is morphing or created unique by design for each system OR on reboot


Symantec says…


SANS says…


Sophos Says…

• 70% of malware is unique to 1 company (APT)• 80% of malware is unique to 10 or less (APT)• That means…• 20% of malware is what the AV industry focuses

on, but it is what most of you and everyone in this room sees and gets by:– Attachments in email– URL in email– Surfing the web

• Ads• WordPress, Drupal, Joomla…


A quick look at

Advanced Malware

Artifacts


Winnti - Malware Infection

Malware Launch

Hiding malwarein the Registry

Modify Service


Escalate permissions obvious NOT your admin

Check the Service used

Modify Permissions

Push out malware using CMD Shell & CScript


Using the Registry for storage

Update Registry

Change Registry Permissions

Change permissions on files


Bad behavior becomes obvious

Doing Recon

Going after Terminal Services

Query Users


You can even capture their Credentials

Caught THEIR Credentials!


Persistence

• Avoided leaving key files behind like they did before, well one anyways… the persistence piece


HKLM\Software\Clients

• putfile

• file

• read

4D5A = MZ in HEXKey Size = 256k


Persistence

• Infector… One for the DLL (infect.exe) and one for the Driver (InfectSys.exe)

• Altered system management binaries

– McAfeeFrameworkService

– BESClientHelper

– Attempted a few others, some failed


Persistence

• BAM! Got ya – PROCMon on bootup


A quick look at

Commodity Malware

Artifacts


Angler delivered Kovter

• Unique way to hide the persistence

• Inserted a null byte in the name of the \Run key so that RegEdit and Reg Query fail to read and display the value

• And a LARGE Reg Key (anything over 20k is large)


Dridex Artifacts


Dridex Persistence

• New method towards the end of 2015, nothing in the Registry showing persistence while system was running

• In memory only until system shutdown

– On shutdown the Run key was created

• On startup the malware loads and Run key deleted


Dridex is Baaack

• 2016 variant


How to Detect

Malicious Behavior


Take Away

#1


Where to start

• What am I suppose to set?

“Windows Logging Cheat Sheet”

“Windows File Auditing Cheat Sheet”

“Windows Registry Auditing Cheat Sheet”

“Windows Splunk Logging Cheat Sheet”

“Malware Management Framework”

• Find them all here:

– MalwareArchaeology.com


PowerShell

• It’s coming… in a BIG way - It’s already here• Ben Ten uses it (Not PowerShell)• Carlos uses it (MetaSploit)• Dave uses it (SET)• Kevin too (Pen Tester)• Dridex uses it• RansomWare uses it

• And Windows default logging is TERRIBLE for it!


Take Away

#2


So what do we do about PowerShell?

• The “Windows PowerShell Logging Cheat Sheet”

• Designed to catch the folks I just mentioned, and others ;-)

• Get it at:

– MalwareArchaeology.com


Take Away

#3


How to catch this stuff

Enable Command Line Logging !!!!

• At the time of Winnti 2014 ONLY Win 8.1 and Win 2012 R2 had command line logging

• Which we had, then we saw this in our alerts of suspicious commands (Cscript & cmd.exe & cacls & net & takeown & pushd & attrib)

• SIX Commands

• Scripts too


And this query - Splunk

• index=windows LogName=Security EventCode=4688 NOT (Account_Name=*$) (arp.exe OR at.exe OR bcdedit.exe OR bcp.exe OR chcp.exe OR cmd.exe OR cscript.exe OR csvde OR dsquery.exe OR ipconfig.exe OR mimikatz.exe OR nbtstat.exe OR nc.exe OR netcat.exe OR netstat.exe OR nmap OR nslookup.exe OR netsh OR OSQL.exe OR ping.exe OR powershell.exe OR powercat.ps1 OR psexec.exe OR psexecsvc.exe OR psLoggedOn.exe OR procdump.exe OR qprocess.exe OR query.exe OR rar.exe OR reg.exe OR route.exe OR runas.exe OR rundll32 OR schtasks.exe OR sethc.exe OR sqlcmd.exe OR sc.exe OR ssh.exe OR sysprep.exe OR systeminfo.exe OR system32\\net.exe OR reg.exe OR tasklist.exe OR tracert.exe OR vssadmin.exe OR whoami.exe OR winrar.exe OR wscript.exe OR "winrm.*" OR "winrs.*" OR wmic.exe OR wsmprovhost.exe OR wusa.exe) | eval Message=split(Message,".") | evalShort_Message=mvindex(Message,0) | table _time, host, Account_Name, Process_Name, Process_ID, Process_Command_Line, New_Process_Name, New_Process_ID, Creator_Process_ID, Short_Message | stats count > 2


So how do you do this?

• Malware Management allowed us to setup alerts on artifacts from other malware analysis– MalwareManagementFramework.org

• Of course our own experience too

• Malware Discovery allowed us to find odd file hashes, command line details, registry locations

• Malware Analysis gave us the details


What we all need to look for

• Logs of course, properly configured - Events– Command Line details– Admin tools misused – executions– New Services (retail PoS should know this)– Drivers used (.sys)

• New Files dropped anywhere on disk – Hashes– Infected management binary (hash changed)

• Delete on startup, write on shutdown – File & Reg Auditing• Scripts hidden in the registry – Registry Compare• Payload hidden in the registry – Large Reg Keys• Malware Communication – IP and WhoIS info• Expand PowerShell detection• VirusTotal Lookups


So what did we

take away

from all of this?


You basically have 3 options

• Do nothing – Eventually leading to an RGE

• Log Management / SIEM

– Cost $$$ and storage

– But IS the best option, better than most security solutions if you want my opinion

• What if you don’t have Log Management or a SIEM?


It didn’t exist

So we created it!

So you can do it too!


Take Away

#4


• Log and Malicious Discovery tool

• When you run the tool, it tells you what auditing and settings to configure that it requires. LOG-MD won’t harvest anything until you configure the system!

• So answers How to check for the What to set I already told you about


Audit first

• Audit Report of log settings compared to:

– The “Windows Logging Cheat Sheet”

– Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks

– Also USGCB and AU ACSC

• Plain text report so you can include them in your own report format


Audit Settings Report


Summary of Reports


Purpose


• Malware Analysis Lab – Why we initially developed it• Investigate a suspect system• Audit the Windows - Advanced Audit Policy settings• Help MOVE or PUSH security forward• Give the IR folks what they need and the Feds too• Take a full system (File and Reg) snapshot to compare to another

system and report the differences• Discover tricky malware artifacts (Large Keys, Null Byte, AutoRuns)• SPEED !• Deploy with anything you want, SCCM, LanDesk, PSExec, PS, etc…• Replace several tools we use today with one easy to use utility that

does much more• Replace several older tools and GUI tools• To answer the question: Is this system infected or clean?• And do it quickly !

Free Edition


• Audit your settings – Do you comply?• Harvest security relevant log data• Whitelist log events by IP, Cmd Line, Process and

File / Registry audit locations• Perform a full File Baseline of a system• Compare a suspect system to a Baseline or Dir• Perform a full Registry snapshot of a system• Compare a suspect system to a Reg Baseline• Look for Large Registry Keys for hidden payloads• 12 Reports


• Everything the Free Edition does and…• 21 reports, breakdown of things to look for• Specify the Output directory• Harvest Sysmon logs• Whitelist Hash compare results• Whitelist Registry compare results• Create a Master-Digest to exclude unique files• Free updates for 1 year, expect a new release

every quarter• Manual – How to use LOG-MD Professional


Future Versions – In the works!• PowerShell details

• WhoIs lookups of IP Addresses called

• VirusTotal lookups of discovered files• Find parent-less processes• Assess all processes and create a Whitelist• Assess all services and create a Whitelist• VirusTotal lookups of unknown or new processes and

services• Other API calls to security vendors


NEW Feature!

• WhoIs lookups of IP’sVawTrak


Let’s look

at some

LOG-MD

RESULTS


Crypto Event

» C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\vcwixk.exe

» C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\vcwpir.exe

» C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c del C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\vcwixk.exe >> NUL

» C:\Windows\System32\vssadmin.exe delete shadows /all /Quiet


Malicious Word Doc

DRIDEX


Malicious Word Doc con’t

More DRIDEX


Use the power of Excel

• The reports are in .CSV format

• Excel has sorting and filters

• Filters are AWESOME to thin out your results

• You might take filtered results and add them to your whitelist once vetted

• Save to .XLS and format, color code and produce your report

• For .TXT files use NotePad++


So what do we get?

• WHAT Processes executed

• WHERE it executed from

• IP’s to enter into Log Management to see WHO else opened the malware

• Details needed to remediate infection

• Details to improve your Active Defense!

• I did this in…15 Minutes!

So what do we get?


• WHAT Processes executed

• WHERE it executed from

• IP’s to enter into Log Management to see WHO else opened the malware

• Details needed to remediate infection

• Details to improve your Active Defense!

• I did this in…

15 Minutes!

Resources


• Websites– Log-MD.com The tool

• The “Windows Logging Cheat Sheet”– MalwareArchaeology.com

• Malware Analysis Report links too– To start your Malware Management program

• This presentation is on SlideShare and website– Search for MalwareArchaeology or LOG-MD

Malware Archaeology

Questions?


You can find us at:

• Log-MD.com

• @HackerHurricane• @Boettcherpwned

• MalwareArchaeology.com• HackerHurricane.com (blog)• MalwareManagementFramework.Org

• http://www.slideshare.net – LinkedIn now

Technology

Logging for hackers SAINTCON