A Step-by-Step Guide to How Threat Hunting Works
Stay ahead of cybercrime with proactive threat hunting. Learn how threat hunters identify hidden threats, protect critical systems,… Continue reading A Step-by-Step Guide to How Threat Hunting Works
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Stay ahead of cybercrime with proactive threat hunting. Learn how threat hunters identify hidden threats, protect critical systems,… Continue reading A Step-by-Step Guide to How Threat Hunting Works
Kaspersky experts analyze cyberdefense weak points, including patch management, policy violations and MSSP issues, and real-world cases where compromise assessment helped detect and mitigate incidents. Continue reading Risk reduction redefined: How compromise assessment helps strengthen cyberdefenses
In early 2023, Google’s Bard made headlines for a pretty big mistake, which we now call an AI hallucination. During a demo, the chatbot was asked, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?” Bard answered that JWST, which launched in December 2021, took the “very first pictures” […]
The post AI hallucinations can pose a risk to your cybersecurity appeared first on Security Intelligence.
Continue reading AI hallucinations can pose a risk to your cybersecurity
VirusTotal has incorporated a powerful new tool to fight against
malware: JA4 client fingerprinting. This feature allows
security researchers to track and identify malicious files based
on the unique characteristics of their TLS client communications.
JA4,
developed by
FoxIO, represents a significant
advancement over the older JA3 fingerprinting method. JA3’s
effectiveness had been hampered by the increasing use of TLS
extension randomization in https clients, which made
fingerprints
less consistent. JA4 was specifically designed to be
resilient to this randomization, resulting in more stable and
reliable fingerprints.
JA4 fingerprinting focuses on
analyzing the
TLS Client Hello packet, which is sent unencrypted from
the client to the server at the start of a TLS connection.
This packet contains a treasure trove of information that can
uniquely identify the client application or its underlying
TLS library. Some of the key elements extracted by JA4
include:
VirusTotal has integrated JA4
fingerprinting into its platform through the behavior_network
file
search modifier. This allows analysts to quickly
discover relationships between files based on their JA4
fingerprints.
To find the JA4 value, navigate to the “behavior” section of
the desired sample and locate the TLS subsection. In addition
to JA4, you might also find JA3 or JA3S there.
Example Search: Let’s say you’ve encountered a suspicious
file that exhibits the JA4 fingerprint
“t10d070600_c50f5591e341_1a3805c3aa63” during VirusTotal’s
behavioral analysis.
You can click on this JA4 to pivot using the
search query
behavior_network:t10d070600_c50f5591e341_1a3805c3aa63
finding other files with the same fingerprint This search
will pivot you to additional samples that share the same JA4
fingerprint, suggesting they might be related. This could
indicate that these files are part of the same malware family
or share a common developer or simply share a common TLS
library.
To broaden your search, you can
use wildcards within the JA4 hash. For instance, the search:
behaviour_network:t13d190900_*_97f8aa674fd9
Returns files that match the
JA4_A and JA4_C components of the JA4 hash while allowing
for variations in the middle section, which often corresponds
to the cipher suite. This technique is useful for identifying
files that might use different ciphers but share other JA4
characteristics.
YARA hunting rules using the
“vt” module can be written to
automatically detect files based on their JA4 fingerprints.
Here’s an example of a YARA rule that targets a specific JA4
fingerprint:
This rules will flag any file submitted to VirusTotal that
exhibits the matching JA4 fingerprint. The first example only
matches “t12d190800_d83cc789557e_7af1ed941c26” during
behavioral analysis. The second rule will match a regular
expression /t10d070600_.*_1a3805c3aa63/, only matching JA4_A
and JA4_C components, excluding the JA4_B cipher suite. These
fingerprints could be linked to known malware, a suspicious
application, or any TLS client behavior that is considered
risky by security analysts.
Description | JA4 | Example SHA256 |
---|---|---|
Linux miner, trojan | t12d5908h1_7bd0586cbef7_046e095b7c4a | caed9b2d91f5802da4b1844068e7df971d50a11411ff2a792aedce96554539f9 |
GoLang | t13d190900_9dc949149365_97f8aa674fd9 | 00b001f5d30e7a51bf9eced4e41267912353153dcc52605a737a6778aaecfbfb |
SnakeLogger / Redline | t10d070600_c50f5591e341_1a3805c3aa63 | 03461c2a07431aed5ff68bbcf42d7ef82f32190b44ba140befd3f474614b5f3d |
VirusTotal’s adoption
of JA4 client fingerprinting will provide users with an
invaluable tool for dissecting and tracking TLS client
behaviors, leading to enhanced threat hunting, pivoting, and
more robust malware identification.
Happy Hunting.
Continue reading Unveiling Hidden Connections: JA4 Client Fingerprinting on VirusTotal
How Kaspersky implemented machine learning for threat hunting in Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) global threat data. Continue reading Finding a needle in a haystack: Machine learning at the forefront of threat hunting research
In this Help Net Security interview, Shane Cox, Director, Cyber Fusion Center at MorganFranklin Consulting, discusses the evolving methodologies and strategies in threat hunting and explains how human-led approaches complement each other to form a robu… Continue reading How human-led threat hunting complements automation in detecting cyber threats
The Olympic Games Paris 2024 was by most accounts a highly successful Olympics. Some 10,000 athletes from 204 nations competed in 329 events over 16 days. But before and during the event, authorities battled Olympic-size cybersecurity threats coming from multiple directions. In preparation for expected attacks, authorities took several proactive measures to ensure the security […]
The post How Paris Olympic authorities battled cyberattacks, and won gold appeared first on Security Intelligence.
Continue reading How Paris Olympic authorities battled cyberattacks, and won gold
Cloud identity protection company Permiso has created YetiHunter, a threat detection and hunting tool companies can use to query their Snowflake environments for evidence of compromise. YetiHunter executing queries (Source: Permiso Security) Recent att… Continue reading YetiHunter: Open-source threat hunting tool for Snowflake environments
Images:Many threat actors use images related to the organizations or entities they intend to impersonate. They do this to make documents appear legitimate and gain the trust of their victims.
[Content_Types].xml:This file specifies the content types and relationships within the Office Open XML (OOXML) document. It essentially defines the types of content and how they are organized within the file structure.
Styles.xml:Stores stylistic definitions for your document. These styles provide consistent formatting instructions for fonts, paragraph spacing, colors, numbering, lists, and much more.
The first image is just a simple line with no particular meaning. It’s embedded in over 100 files known by VirusTotal.
The second image is a hand and has 14 compressed parents.
The third image consists of black circles and also has over 100 compressed parents.
The last image is like a Word page with a table, presenting a fake EDA Roadmap of the European Commission. The image format is EMF (an old format) and it has 4 compressed parents
[Content_Type].xml |
Shared |
3d8578fd41d766740a1f1ddef972a081436a2d70ab1e9552a861e58d8bbf5321 |
APT33, |
4ea40d34cfcaf69aa35b405c575c7b87e35c72246f04d2d0c5f381bc50fc8b3d |
APT29, |
4f7fa7433484b4e655d185719613e2f98d017590146d15eedc1aa1d967636b3a |
FIN7, |
529739886f6402a9cd5a8064ece73eef19c597ef35c0bc8d09390e8b4de9041b |
FIN7, |
688dca40507fb96630f3df80442266a0354e7c24b7df86be3ea57069b25d12c6 |
Gamaredon, |
6f1ac5f0ebfb7e97d3dc4100e88eaab10016a5cac75e1251781f2ea12477af51 |
Gamaredon, |
7796c382cd4c7c4ae3bcf2eed4091fbb20a2563ca88f2aecadb950ad9cf661f8 |
Razor |
b4fa7f3faa0510e4d969219bceec2a90e8a48ff28e060db3cdd37ce935c3779c |
Razor |
dfa90f373b8fd8147ee3e4bfe1ee059e536cc1b068f7ec140c3fc0e6554f331a |
Gamaredon, |
fe98b3bcf96f9c396eb9193f0f9484ef01d3017257300cc76098854b1f103b69 |
FIN7, |
ff5a5ba3730a8d2ec0cbad39e5edf4ad502107bd0ef8a5347f29262b3dfe8a43 |
Mustang |
Styles.xml |
Shared |
13ed55637980452662cb6838a2931a5e54fbed5881bcbae368b3d189d3a01930 |
APT28, |
2de1fc9c48c4b0190361c49cdb053fd39cf81e32f12c82d08f88aec34358257f |
Hazy |
59df7787c7cf5408481ae149660858d3af765a0c2cd63d6309b151380f92adb2 |
TA505, |
8f590f608f0719404a1731bb70a6ce2db420fd61e5a387d5b3091d47c7e21ac9 |
APT28, |
de392cd4bf1d650a9cf8c6d24e05e0605bf4eaf1518710f0307d8aceb9e5496c |
Hazy |
e16f84c5fd1df6af1a1f2049f7862f4ea460765863476afb17e78edee772d35b |
APT32, |
Continue reading Tracking Threat Actors Using Images and Artifacts
In the past eighteen months, generative AI (gen AI) has gone from being the source of jaw-dropping demos to a top strategic priority in nearly every industry. A majority of CEOs report feeling under pressure to invest in gen AI. Product teams are now scrambling to build gen AI into their solutions and services. The […]
The post 3 recommendations for adopting generative AI for cyber defense appeared first on Security Intelligence.
Continue reading 3 recommendations for adopting generative AI for cyber defense