Cyber Corp Case 2 Writeup - Part 2

The second case of the CyberCorp challenge on CyberDefenders.org is all about threat hunting. Created by @BlackMatter23 and his team, this challenge is based on a real-world attack so it is perfect for gaining practical experience in threat hunting.

This writeup is part 2 out of multiple parts. You could read Part 1 here and Part 3 here.

Checking DNS Requests

Question 6. Specify the domain name of the resource from which the files mentioned in question 5 were supposedly downloaded as a result of malicious code execution.

This one is easy. Using the same date range from the previous question, I changed the query to event_type:DNSReq (where "DNSReq" is short for "DNS Requests").

We could easily see a DNS record being queried, which is our answer to this question.

Finding the encoded executable code

Question 7. The first file downloaded (as a result of executing the code …

Cyber Corp Case 2 Writeup - Part 1

The second case of the CyberCorp challenge on CyberDefenders.org is all about threat hunting. Created by @BlackMatter23 and his team, this challenge is based on a real-world attack so it is perfect for gaining practical experience in threat hunting.

This writeup is part one out of multiple parts as I will be detailing my thought process and the steps I took for each question.

Edit: Part 2 and Part 3 is now out.

Understanding WMI Persistence

Question 1. The Threat Hunting process usually starts with the analyst making a hypothesis about a possible compromise vector or techniques used by an attacker. In this scenario, your initial hypothesis is as follows: "The attacker used the WMI subscription mechanism to obtain persistence within the infrastructure". Verify this hypothesis and find the name of the WMI Event Consumer used by the attacker to maintain his foothold.

So the question tells us that …

New Tool Preview: vATT&CK

I have released a new cybersecurity-related tool called vATT&CK (Visual ATT&CK). It is a relationship visualizer for the Mitre ATT&CK framework.

What the tool does is that it makes a visual map of the searched technique and all the related information. You can watch a video of the tool in action here.

Each node will be colored depending on it's category. The color legends is as follows:

• Pink - Related subtechniques
• Orange - Malware that uses the searched technique
• Red - Groups that uses the searched technique
• Blue - Tools that use the searched technique
• Yellow - Mitigations

This tool is still in development. I plan to add a number of improvements such as:

• Ability to click on nodes and then update the visual map
• Ability to search not just by technique, but also by other categories

I also plan on releasing a live demo of the tool very soon in the …

IOLI Crackme 0x04

I am continuing my reverse engineering review by tackling the IOLI crackmes by @pof. These are beginner friendly challenges that is perfect for newbies or for those who want to review the basics like me. Check out my writeups for 0x00, 0x01, 0x02, and 0x03.

Getting the password

Loading the program in IDA revealed something new. There is now a _check function that when opened looks more complicated than the previous challenges.

The one thing that I immediately noticed is the call to the _strlen function similar to the previous challenge. This means that the length of the input string plays another important role.

One curious thing is the condition that leads to the "Password Incorrect" block, as shown below.

call _strlen
cmp [ebp+var_C], eax
jnb short loc_401387

From the looks of it, the check will fail if var_C (Which is our var_counter from the previous challenge) reaches the …

Building my Virtual Cybersecurity Home Lab

I have recently realized that one part of cybersecurity that I am lacking basic knowledge on is networking. I honestly did not think it was important when I was starting. It was the reason why I skipped Network+ so I could take Security+ directly.

Now I know better.

Ever since my realization, I have taken steps to patch the holes in my knowledge. I've started taking courses and bought books. But one thing that has made the most impact is me building my very own "homelab".

I first came to know of the concept of homelabs from Reddit. To those unfamiliar, it is the practice of building a networked environment to gain practical knowledge in networking and IT. One way to do this is by making a virtual network.

And so, over the past month, I have been building my very own virtual homelab with a focus on integrating cybersecurity …

Making a RAT

A Remote Access Tool (RAT) is used to remotely access a computer. It has legitimate uses but it can also be used for malicious purposes. I've seen it used in malware I've analyzed and I've always been curious as to how it works.

I was following along the Handmade Hero project ¹ when the topic about dynamic DLL loading came up. This is a process of dynamically loading a DLL at runtime which is useful if you want your program to check if a DLL is present in a system before loading it.

Two of the system calls that were discussed were LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress. These were familiar to me as I've seen them used on malware shellcode I analyzed in the past. I later learned that this is also used as an anti-virus evasion technique. I found this interesting.

Having learned how to do runtime DLL loading myself I …

Finding phished passwords on a scam site

Since my last post about my investigations of a Facebook phishing site, I have received several messages from friends asking me to check out other suspected phishing/scam sites. One of the most alarming out of them was this one where I was able to find the file where the scammer stores the phished usernames and passwords.

This particular phishing site conducts its operations like this:

• An ad is shown on Facebook, promising free coupons for famous fast food restaurants
• Clicking on the ad takes the user to a fake Facebook login page hosted on blogger.com
• Login page then sends phished username and passwords to a PHP file hosted on 000webhost

The phished passwords are then stored in a .txt file (blatantly named, victims.txt), which is publicly accessible on an open directory. Getting to this directory involved following the scripts and the URLs used by the scammers. It's …

Emprisa Maldoc Writeup

This is a writeup for Emprisa maldoc challenge that I made for CyberDefenders.org. You can play it here.

The very first thing that I do when confronted with a malicious document is to run it in a malware lab. This particular document, however, would not exhibit anything malicious on recent versions of Word.

A quick search of the hash on malware sandboxes would reveal that the document makes use of the CVE-2017-18822 vulnerability. This is a vulnerability that became known and was promptly patched around November of 2017.

The above details give us a hint on how to trigger the document, which is to run the maldoc on a version of Microsoft Word that doesn't have the patches that fix the vulnerability. The easiest way to do this is to boot up a new VM with a fresh install of Windows 7 and with updates disabled.

This new environment …

Investigating an FB phishing site

Last April 21, people were posting warnings about a suspicious Facebook post where your account will supposedly get hacked when you click it. From the discussions, I gathered that it is a classic phishing site scam. A very effective one too, because as soon as an account gets compromised the attacker logs in and tags the friends in the account allowing it to spread further. The news of this got big that even the PH CERT issued a security advisory on it.

I was just curious, I swear!

I wanted to see the phishing site for myself but I was unlucky and did not get tagged by anyone. So I reached out to people who did and I eventually got to this page shown below:

To a trained eye, one could easily see the obvious red flags. But how can one notice them if there is a very attention-catching image …

The Emprisa Maldoc Challenge

I was inspired to make my own CTF challenge after finishing Maldoc101 found at Cyberdefenders.org. The challenge I made is called Emprisa Maldoc and it is now up on their website.

Emprisa is based on a malicious document that I downloaded blindly from a malware sandbox. It used a relatively old but still interesting exploit that is still in use today. After researching more about it I came across a tool that can generate a malicious doc using the same exact exploit. This is when I got the idea to turn it into a challenge.

The challenge has 14 questions with increasing and varying difficulty. The challenge is targeted towards intermediate analysts who already have experience examining maldocs before. The goal is to reinforce the use of common malware analysis tools, but at the same time, teach players new things and techniques. It involves flexing muscles related to open …