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How to Stop Malware-Created Backdoors

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Hackers have been placing backdoors into systems for years for a variety of purposes. We have all read the stories about backdoors being installed in retailers to siphon payment card information; a PSI DSS and reputation nightmare.

Backdoors also have been deployed in government and higher education institutions to gather intellectual property, such and defense and trade secrets. Medical institutions pay out settlements due to HIPAA violations caused by these forms of malware every year.

A perfect example of a backdoor-creating malware is Calisto. This backdoor trojan is designed for macOS (many executives use Macs) and attempts to install itself in different folders until it finds a home and then enable accessibility authorization.

If this can be accomplished, it will open a backdoor to the hacker to control the entire system. In most cases, this malware fails (due to protections placed on new Macs) but can leave behind system vulnerabilities.

So, how do you stop such an aggressive form of malware? It’s important to know that not all trojans are alike.

Some will create a customized payload every time it lands on a new system to avoid future attacks being blocked by signatures. SonicWall stops known backdoors on our next-generation firewalls (NGFW) and can test and find new versions of backdoor malware with the Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service.

But for threats that land on the endpoint, the key is using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) that can detect the malware’s presence on the endpoint. Does it try to bypass antivirus? Does it embed itself in a directory it shouldn’t? Does it attempt to download something from a command and control (C&C) server? These are just some of the ways Calisto can be identified.

To properly stop Calisto and other backdoor-building malware, download the exclusive tech brief: Protecting macOS Endpoints from Calisto. The brief will explore:

  • Origin of Calisto
  • Why SIP enablement is not enough
  • How the malware delivers its payload
  • Secondary steps the malware will take to ensure execution
  • Proven solutions for stopping Calisto

 

The Evolution of Next-Generation Antivirus for Stronger Malware Defense

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Threat detection has evolved from static to dynamic behavioral analysis to detect-threatening behavior. Comprehensive layers of defense, properly placed within the network and the endpoint, provide the best and most efficient detection and response capabilities to match today’s evolving threats.

For years, SonicWall offered endpoint protection utilizing traditional antivirus (AV) capabilities. It relied on what is known as static analysis. The word “static” is just like it sounds. Traditional antivirus used static lists of hashes, signatures, behavioral rules and heuristics to discover viruses, malware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs). It scanned these static artifacts across the entire operating system and mounted filesystems for retroactive detection of malicious artifacts through scheduled scanning.

Traditional antivirus focuses on pre-process execution prevention. Meaning, all the scanning mechanisms are primarily designed to prevent the execution of malicious binaries. If we go back 20 years, this approach was very effective at blocking the majority of malware, and many antivirus companies capitalized on their execution prevention approaches.

As that technology waned, the provider we had for traditional antivirus discontinued their legacy antivirus solution and SonicWall sought new and more effective alternatives.

Traditional Defenses Fail to Match the Threat

In the past, attackers, determined to beat antivirus engines, focused much of their attention on hiding their activities. At first, the goal of the attacker was to package their executables into archive formats.

Some threat actors utilized multi-layer packaging (for example, placing an executable into a zip then placing the zip into another compression archive such as arj or rar formats). Traditional antivirus engines responded to this by leveraging file analysis and unpacking functions to scan binaries included within them.

Threat actors then figured out ways to leverage documents and spreadsheets, especially Microsoft Word or Excel, which allowed embedded macros which gave way to the “macro virus.”

Antivirus vendors had to become document macro experts, and Microsoft got wise and disabled macros by default in their documents (requiring user enablement). But cybercriminals didn’t stop there. They continued to evolve the way they used content to infect systems.

Fast forward to today. Threat actors now utilize so many varieties of techniques to hide themselves from static analysis engines, the advent of the sandbox detection engine became popular.

I often use an analogy to explain a malware sandbox. It’s akin to a petri dish in biology where a lab technician or doctor examines a germ in a dish and watches its growth and behavior using a microscope.

Behavioral Sandbox Analysis

Sandbox technologies allow for detection by monitoring malware behavior within virtual or emulated operating systems. The sandboxes run and extract malware behavior within these monitored operating system to investigate their motives. As sandboxing became more prevalent, threat actors redesigned their malware to hide themselves through sandbox evasion techniques.

This led SonicWall to develop advanced real-time memory monitoring to detect malware designed to evade sandbox technology. Today, SonicWall uses a multitude of capabilities — coupled with patent-pending Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMITM) — to identify and mitigate malware more effectively than competing solutions.

SonicWall Automated Real-Time Breach Prevention & Detection

The Endpoint Evolves, Shares Intelligence

Next comes the endpoint. As we know, most enterprises and small businesses are mobile today. Therefore, a comprehensive defense against malware and compliance must protect remote users and devices as they mobilize beyond an organization’s safe perimeter. This places an emphasis in combining both network security and endpoint security.

Years ago, I wrote research at Gartner about the gaps in the market. There was a critical need to bridge network, endpoint and other adjacent devices together into a shared intelligence and orchestrated fabric. I called it “Intelligence Aware Security Controls (IASC).”

The core concept of IASC is that an orchestration fabric must exist between different security technology controls. This ensures that each control is aware of a detection event and other shared telemetry so that every security control can take that information and automatically respond to threats that emerge across the fabric.

So, for example, a botnet threat detection at the edge of the network can inform firewalls that are deployed deeper in the datacenter to adjust policies according to the threat emerging in the environment.

As Tomer Weingarten, CEO of SentinelOne said, “Legacy antivirus is simply no match for today’s sophisticated file-based malware, which proliferates much faster than new signatures can be created.”

Limitations of Legacy Antivirus (AV) Technology

To better understand the difference between legacy antivirus (AV) and next-generation antivirus (NGAV), we should know the advantages and unique features of NGAV over legacy signature-based AV solutions. Below are four primary limitations of legacy offerings.

  • Frequent updates. Traditional AV solutions require frequent (i.e., daily or weekly) updates of their signature databases to protect against the latest threats. This approach doesn’t scale well. In 2017 alone, SonicWall collected more than 56 million unique malware samples.
  • Invasive disk scans. Traditional AV solutions recommend recurring disk scans to ensure threats did not get in. These recurring scans are a big source of frustration for end users, as productivity is impacted during lengthy scans.
  • Cloud dependency. Traditional AV solutions are reliant on cloud connectivity for best protection. Signature databases have grown so large that it is no longer possible to push the entire database to the device. So, they keep the vast majority of signatures in the cloud and only push the most prevalent signatures to the agent.
  • Remote risk. In cases where end-users work in cafés, airports, hotels and other commercial facilities, the Wi-Fi provider is supported by ad revenues and encourage users to download the host’s tools (i.e., adware) for free connectivity. These tools or the Wi-Fi access point can easily block access to the AV cloud, which poses a huge security risk.

Switching to Real-time, Behavior-focused Endpoint Protection

Considering these limitations, there is a need for viable replacement of legacy AV solutions. For this reason, SonicWall partnered with SentinelOne to deliver a best-in-class NGAV and malware protection solution: SonicWall Capture Client.

SonicWall Capture Client is a unified endpoint offering with multiple protection capabilities. With a next-generation malware protection engine powered by SentinelOne, Capture Client applies advanced threat protection techniques, such as machine learning, network sandbox integration and system rollback. Capture Client uses automated intelligence to adapt and detect new strains of malware through advanced behavior analytics.

SonicWall Capture Client was a direct response to multiple market trends.

  • First, there has been a detection and response focus, which is why SentinelOne offers our customers the ability to detect and then select the response in workflows (along with a malware storyline).
  • Second, devices going mobile and outside the perimeter meant that backhauling traffic to a network device was not satisfying customers who wanted low latency network traffic for their mobile users (and, frankly, the extra bandwidth costs that go along with it).
  • Third, because of all the evasion techniques that attackers use, a real-time behavioral engine is preferred over a static analysis engine to detect advanced attacks.
  • Fourth, the Capture Client SentinelOne threat detection module’s deep file inspection engine sometimes detects low confidence or “suspicious” files or activities. In these low confidence scenarios, Capture Client engages the advanced sandbox analysis of RTDMI to deliver a much deeper analysis and verdict about the suspicious file/activity.

One crucial feature of the latest Capture Client solution is the ability to record all the behaviors of an attack and the processes involved on an endpoint into an attack storyline — essential for security operations detection, triage and response efforts.

By listening to the market and focusing on the four key points above, SonicWall delivered best-in-class protection for endpoints, and another important milestone in SonicWall’s mission to provide automated, real-time breach detection and prevention.

SonicWall Capture Client combines multiple technologies to provide the most efficient and effective defense against threat actors. The solution should be paired with a defense-in-depth security strategy across all the key layers of transport, including email, network and endpoints.

Botnets Targeting Obsolete Software

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Overview: This is not a disclosure of a new vulnerability in SonicWall software. Customers with the current SonicWall Global Management System (GMS) 8.2 and above have nothing to worry about. The reported vulnerability relates to an old version of GMS (8.1), which was replaced in December 2016. Customers with GMS 8.1 and earlier releases should patch, per SonicWall guidance, as they are running out-of-support software. Best practice is to deploy a SonicWall next-generation firewall (NGFW) or a web application firewall (WAF) in front of GMS and other web servers to protect against such attacks. Look for global third-party validation on protection effectiveness, such as the 2018 NSS Labs NGFW Group Test. After rigorous testing, SonicWall firewalls earned the NSS Labs coveted ‘Recommended’ rating five times.

On Sept. 9, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 published a blog post highlighting a developing trend of botnets picking up publicly known CVE exploits and weaponizing them against enterprise infrastructure. This marks a change in the botnet authors’ tactics from targeting consumer-grade routers and IP cameras to searching for higher-profile enterprise targets to harness additional endpoints for DDoS attacks.

The first botnet, Mirai, targeted the Apache Struts vulnerability from early 2017, which affects web servers around the world. On March 6, 2017, SonicWall provided protection against the Apache Struts vulnerability with the Intrusion Prevention Service (IPS) on the NGFW line, rolling out protection to all firewalls with licensed IPS service.

The second botnet highlighted in the Palo Alto Networks post, Gafgyt, picked up the Metasploit code for an XML-RPC vulnerability for an obsolete version of SonicWall GMS (8.1) central management software, which was replaced by GMS 8.2 in December 2016.

The bottom line: the reported botnet attack is misguided and presents no threat to SonicWall GMS in production since December 2016.

Implementing Cybersecurity Best Practices

Current SonicWall GMS users are not at risk. However, there are broader lessons here for the industry and business owners:

  • Take End-of-Life and End-of-Support announcements seriously and update proactively. They become a compliance and security risk for critical systems and compromise an enterprise’s compliance and governance posture.
  • Security best practices dictate that you never expose a web server directly to the internet without a NGFW or WAF deployed in front.
  • A security layer between the internet and critical enterprise infrastructure, like web servers or centralized firewall management, provides the ability to virtually patch zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits while working out a sensible patching strategy. For example, a SonicWall NGFW with Intrusion Prevention or a SonicWall WAF can easily handle this task.

Using Third-Party Validation

The blog post does, however, underscore the rapidly-evolving nature of today’s threat landscape, evidenced by the mixing of malware and exploits to create new malware cocktails, and the need to use the latest and most effective security solutions to protect against them.

When selecting a product to protect your critical infrastructure, go beyond listening to vendor claims and look at globally recognized independent testing, such as the NSS Labs NGFW report, to validate security efficacy. Items that you should consider when selecting a security product for the modern threat landscape:

  1. NSS Labs specifically tests for protection on non-standard ports (not just 80/443, for example) because malware often uses non-standard ports to bypass traffic inspection. Products that lack inspection on non-standard ports are blind to many malware attacks, and are easily fooled into missing dangerous traffic and allowing malware and exploits to sail right through.

2018 NSS Labs NGFW Group Test Report — Evasion Resistance

2018 NSS Labs Next Generation Firewall Security Value MapTM (SVM)

  1. Evaluate your NGFW on security efficacy, and how it deals with malware cocktails, such as the recently exposed Intel-based, processor-level vulnerabilities like Spectre, Meltdown and Foreshadow.
  • SonicWall patented and patent-pending Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMITM) technology is proven to catch chip/processor attacks through its unique approach to real-time memory inspection.
  • SonicWall RTDMI protection can also be applied to mitigate malicious PDFs, Microsoft Office documents and executables. The focus on PDF and Office document protection is especially important. Attacks are shifting into this delivery mechanism as browsers clamped down on Flash and Java content, drying up a fertile area of exploit and malware delivery. For example, RTDMI discovered more than 12,300 never-before-seen attack variants in the first half of 2018 alone.
  • The SonicWall Capture Client endpoint suite plugs into the RTDMI engine to offer the same protection for users that are outside a protected network.

 

The Bottom Line

The reported botnet attack is misguided and presents no threat to SonicWall GMS in production since December 2016.

May 2018: Cyberattack Volume Continues to Rise, Ransomware Attempts Jump 299 Percent

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The very latest cyber threat intelligence for May 2018 depicts increases in a number of attack areas, particularly when comparing against 2017 cyber threat data. Through May 2018, the SonicWall Capture Labs threat researches have recorded:

Global Cyberattacks — May 2018

  • 2 million malware attacks (64 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 9 million ransomware attacks (78 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 238,828 encrypted threats (142 percent year-over-year increase)

Global Cyberattacks — Year to Date

  • 5 billion malware attacks (128 percent increase )
  • 2 million ransomware attacks (299 percent increase)
  • 2 million encrypted threats (283 percent increase)

To put these numbers in a more practical light, it’s helpful to break them down by customer. In May 2018 alone, the average SonicWall customer faced:

  • 2,302 malware attacks (56 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 62 ransomware attacks (69 percent year-over-year increase)
  • Almost 94 encrypted threats
  • Over 14 phishing attacks per day

With each passing month, cybercriminals continue to perpetrate cyberattacks at an ever-accelerating rate. It is interesting to note that although encrypted traffic is actually down slightly when compared with last year, encrypted threats have more than doubled. This points to cybercriminals who are more aware of the efficacy of encrypting their attacks.

In addition, phishing attacks have increased by almost 40 percent since last month. To better educate your end users and follow secure email best practices, use the phishing IQ test to increase their suspicions when opening emails, particularly from unknown senders.

As the cyber war continues between threat actors and security professionals, arming your organization with the latest cyber threat intelligence is critical to implementing or improving a sound security posture. As long as vulnerabilities exist, there are threat actors working to exploit them.

Find Threat Metrics When You Need Them

Would you like to keep up-to-date on threat metrics, security news and worldwide cyberattacks? The SonicWall Security Center has all of this and more.

VISIT THE SECURITY CENTER

RSA Conference 2018: See You Next Year

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Every year, RSA Conference 2018 is a fast-paced, high-energy gathering for cyber security discussion, networking, innovation and learning for attendees, panelists, speakers and exhibitors alike. It’s almost impossible to see and hear all the show has to offer.

To help, we’ve collected all the interesting events and news from the week. It was an amazing four days — or eight days if you are part of our event staff — and we thank everyone for visiting us.

Endpoint protection still top of mind

While endpoint protection was a major theme at RSA, the technology partnership between SonicWall and SentinelOne stole the show with a modern take on endpoint protection. Throughout the week, SonicWall and SentinelOne collaborated to show off the new SonicWall Capture Client and integrated SentinelOne capabilities, like continuous behavioral monitoring and unique rollback capabilities.
> READ MORE

Awards and honors deserve a ‘thank you’

The CRN accolades noted above were just the start for SonicWall, which collected eight awards, including Gold in the CEO of the Year and Security Marketing Team of the Year, at the 2018 Info Security Product Guide Global Excellence Awards ceremony Monday in San Francisco. Also at RSA, SonicWall was named Cybersecurity Company of the Year in the Cyber Defense Magazine InfoSec Awards 2018.

These honors were the result of true dedication from our amazing SonicWall SecureFirst Partners and loyal customer base that spans 200 countries across the globe. Sincerely, thank you.

Streaming RSA Conference live

No matter your good intentions, sometimes it’s impossible to make it out to RSA every year. But that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on SonicWall’s presentation on the cyber arms race. That’s why we streamed a session from SonicWall malware expert Brook Chelmo on Facebook Live. Relive his presentation again and again, or watch it for the first time.

WATCH NOW

Music to inspire

While this musical inspiration was published before RSA kicked off, we had so much fun with our RSA Conference 2018 playlist on Spotify we’d be remiss in not offering it up once again.

GET THE PLAYLIST

Worn out

By the final day of RSA Conference, we’re spent. Our presenters logged dozens of hours presenting during the week. Their voices tired. Their legs weak. And some couldn’t even wait to get back to the hotel for some much-needed rest. And you know what? We can’t wait to do it again next year. See you at RSA Conference 2019, March 4-9.

Farewell, RSA Conference 2018

RSA Conference 2018: Live on Facebook

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RSA Conference 2018 is a flurry of lights, sounds and information. It’s easy to get lost in the buzz and miss what you really want to see. In case you fall into this category — or weren’t able to make the trip to San Francisco at all — we streamed an entire presentation from SonicWall malware expert Brook Chelmo live on Facebook.

Read more

RSA Conference 2018: SonicWall is Hot

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Fresh off of April’s massive SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform launch, SonicWall has been featured in a pair of CRN articles highlighting the hottest products at RSA Conference 2018.

The SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform is lauded in CRN’s “10 Hot New Cloud Security Products Announced at RSA 2018” listing. CRN recaps the platform’s ability to integrate security, management, analytics and real-time threat intelligence across SonicWall’s portfolio of network, email, mobile and cloud security products.

Complementing that accolade, a pair of new SonicWall products were listed in the “20 Hot New Security Products Announced at RSA 2018” category. The new SonicWall NSv virtual firewall (slide 7) and SonicWall Capture Client (slide 12) endpoint protection were showcased.

SonicWall Capture Client is a unified endpoint offering with multiple protection capabilities. With a next-generation malware protection engine powered by SentinelOne, Capture Client delivers advanced threat protection techniques, such as machine learning and system rollback.

SonicWall’s Scott Grebe explains automated, real-time breach detection and prevention during RSA Conference 2018

SonicWall Network Security virtual (NSv) firewalls protect all critical components of your private/public cloud environment from resource misuse attacks, cross virtual machine attacks, side channel attacks and common network-based exploits and threats. It captures traffic between virtual machines (VM) and networks for automated breach prevention and establishes access control measures for data confidentiality and ensures VMs safety and integrity.

How to Stop Fileless Malware

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In 2017, SonicWall Capture Labs discovered 56 million new forms of malware from across the globe. Threat actors are constantly creating updates to known versions of malware to get past defenses that rely on identifying malware (i.e., signatures). The forms of security that stop malware and ransomware based on signatures are only effective if they can identify the strain.

Since malware authors don’t want to continually update their code and have attacks in flight fail, they often resort to creating fileless malware as a highly effective alternative.

What is fileless malware?

Fileless malware has been around for some time, but has dramatically increased in popularity the last few years. These malware leverage on-system tools such as PowerShell, macros (like in Microsoft Word and Excel), Windows Management Instrumentation or other on-system scripting functionality to propagate, execute and perform whatever tasks it was developed to perform.

The problem for the business

One of the reasons fileless malware is so powerful is that security products cannot just block the systems or software that these are utilizing. For example, if a security admin blocked PowerShell, many IT maintenance tasks would be terminated. This makes it impossible for signature-based security solutions to detect or prevent it because the low footprint and the absence of files to scan.

How can SonicWall stop fileless malware?

The key is not to look at the file but, instead, look at how it behaves when it runs on the endpoint. This is effective because although there is a large and increasing number of malware variants, they operate in very similar ways. This is similar to how we educate our children to avoid people based on behavior instead of showing them a list of mug shots every time they leave home.

SonicWall Capture Client, powered by SentinelOne, is a next-generation antivirus endpoint protection platform that uses multiple engines, including static and behavioral AI, to stop malware before, during and even after execution. It also offers the ability to roll back an endpoint to a state before the malware got on to or activated on the system.

In the face of fileless malware, the full behavioral monitoring approach is amazing at detecting and preventing this type of attack because it is agnostic to the attack vector.

How does it work?

SonicWall actively monitors all activities on the agent side at the kernel level to differentiate between malicious and benign activities. Once Capture Client detects malicious activity, it can effectively mitigate an attack and, if needed, roll back any damage, allowing the user to work on a clean device.

Conclusion

Ultimately, adversaries will always take the shortest path to compromise endpoints to ensure the highest return with the least amount of effort. Fileless malware is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to do so. It is not enough to just block essential operations like PowerShell.

You need anti-virus software that fully monitors the behavior of a system to prevent attacks utilizing exploits, macro documents, exploit kits, PowerShell, PowerSploit and zero-days vulnerabilities locally and without dependence to network connectivity.

To learn more, download the in-depth data sheet, “SonicWall Capture Client powered by SentinelOne.”

Webinar: Stop Fileless Malware with SonicWall Capture Client

Join SonicWall and SentinelOne cyber security experts to learn how to stay safe from advanced cyber threats like fileless malware.

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6 Ways Malware Evades Detection – And How to Stop Them

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One of the key characteristics of advanced malware is the use of many tactics to evade detection. In addition to defeating signature-based detection products and behavior-based detection tools, there are hundreds of evasion techniques advanced malware uses to avoid detection. Moreover, a malware object will typically deploy multiple tactics.

While there are hundreds of specific tactics to evade detection, they fall into six key categories.

  1. Stalling delays
    With this tactic, the malware remains idle to defeat timer-based recognition. Most virtualized sandboxes can detect if malware calls the OS sleep function, but they can’t spot evasion if the malware performs the delay internally without calling the OS. Full CPU emulations, “bare-metal” detect these behaviors with unrivaled accuracy. This is very effective against a well-known competitor.
  2. Action-required delays
    This tactic delays malicious activity pending a specific user action (e.g., mouse click, open or close a file or app). Most virtualized sandboxes will not detect malware waiting on user action.
  3. Intelligent suspension of malware
    Unlike simple stalling techniques, this category includes sophisticated evasion techniques that discover the presence of a sandbox and suspend malicious actions to avoid detection. Malware waits until it has completed penetration of the host or machine before injecting, modifying or downloading code; decrypting files; moving laterally across network; or connecting to C2 servers.
  4. Fragmentation
    This tactic splits malware into fragments, which only execute when reassembled by the targeted system. As virtualized sandboxes typically evaluate fragments separately, each fragment appears harmless, thus evading detection.
  5. Return-oriented programming (ROP)
    An ROP evasion tactic modifies the stack (memory addresses of code to be executed next), thus injecting functionality without altering the actual code. ROP evasions delegate the execution of its malicious code to other programs, instead of the malware program, thereby hiding it from conventional detection.
  6. Rootkits
    A rootkit is an application (or set of applications) that hides malicious code in the lower OS layers. Most virtualized sandboxes do not monitor what an OS does with calls from applications, so the malicious actions performed by a rootkit will generally go undetected.

Because of the increased focus on developing evasion tactics for malware, organizations should apply a multi-engine approach to analyzing suspicious code, especially to find and stop ransomware and credential theft.

The award-winning SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) multi-engine sandbox efficiently discovers what code wants to do from the application, to the OS, to the software that resides on the hardware. This approach includes Lastline® Deep Content Inspection™ technology, along with two other complementary engines.

Learn more about how Lastline technology — which earned the highest achievable score in NSS Labs’ 2017 Breach Detection Systems group test —  adds a key layer to Capture’s unique capabilities. Read our Solution Brief: Overcoming Advanced Evasion of Malware Detection.

How to Hide a Sandbox: The Art of Outfoxing Advanced Cyber Threats

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Malware often incorporates advanced techniques to evade analysis and discovery by firewalls and sandboxes. When malware sees evidence that dynamic analysis is occurring, it can invoke different techniques to evade analysis, such as mimicking the behavior of harmless files that are typically ignored by threat detection systems.

Traditional sandboxing approaches that signal their own presence — for example, by instrumenting underlying virtual machines (VM) to intercept malicious function calls — make the analysis environment visible. This can trigger an action by malware to conceal itself.

Because of the increased focus by malware authors on developing evasion tactics, it is important to apply a multi-disciplinary approach to analyzing suspicious code, especially for detecting and analyzing ransomware and malware that attempt credential theft.

SonicWall’s award-winning Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) multi-engine sandbox platform efficiently discovers what code wants to do from the application, to the OS, to the software that resides on the hardware. In fact, SonicWall formed a partnership with VMRay to leverage their agentless hypervisor-level analysis technology as one of the three powerful Capture ATP engines. The VMRay technology executes suspicious code, analyzes changes within the memory of a system to detect malicious activity, while resisting evasion tactics and maximizing zero-day threat detection.

How VMRay enhances Capture ATP

VMRay brings an agentless hypervisor-based approach to dynamic malware analysis. The hypervisor is the underlying computing platform that creates, runs and manages virtual machines on the underlying hardware. Most sandboxing solutions use a hypervisor as a launch pad for either the emulators or virtual machines that are hooked and monitored.

Figure 1 VMRay runs as part of the hypervisor on top of the host OS

VMRay takes a different approach to sandbox analysis by monitoring the activity of the target machine, entirely from the outside, using Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI). VMRay combines CPU hardware virtualization extensions with an innovative monitoring concept called Intermodular Transition Monitoring (ITM) to deliver agentless monitoring of VMs running a native OS without emulation or hooking (to avoid being detected by advanced malware). VMRay runs as part of the hypervisor on top of the host OS, which, in turn, is running on bare metal.

Because VMs in the sandbox aren’t instrumented, threats execute as they would in the wild, and the analysis is invisible — even to the most evasive strains of malware.

VMRay’s agentless hypervisor-based approach provides four key benefits to the SonicWall Capture ATP cloud service:

  • Resistance to evasive malware
  • Detailed analysis results
  • Extraction of IOCs
  • Real-time, high-volume detection

To learn more about these benefits in greater detail, read the Solution Brief: Five Best Practices for Advanced Threat Protection.

DOWNLOAD SOLUTION BRIEF