Bypassing malware analysis sandboxes is easy, let’s discuss how they are doing it and why it works

Presented at BSidesSF 2017, Feb. 13, 2017, 3:30 p.m. (30 minutes)

Have you ever received a piece of malware and wanted to know what it did?  You may have used an automated cloud malware analysis sandbox like VxStream/Reverse.It, Malwr or built your own Cuckoo sandbox.  There are also high-end commercial solutions available such as ReversingLabs, Lastline and those integrated into Email, Web proxies and Next Gen Firewalls.   What about malware that uses documents such as .DOC and .PDF files versus a regular .EXE binary?  Some sandboxes do multiple file formats, some do not and some claim to mimic user behavior.  In comparing commodity malware, what we get in email and drive-by surfing to the advanced custom malware in targeted attacks I found some interesting things while doing manual and sandbox analysis.  This talk will look at free, commercial and gateway (Email/Web) solutions and what can be learned from comparing the results to your own manual malware analysis.   Are these sandboxes worth it?  Should you use them?  What are the gaps?  How much should you rely on the output?  Do these solutions provide us what we need for Incident Response?  Or enough data to improve the defense of our networks?  Do they give us enough artifacts to remediate the infection?

Presenters:

  • Gough, Michael - Founder - Malware Archaeology
    Michael is a Malware Archaeologist, Blue Team defender, Incident Responder and logoholic. Michael developed the "Malware Management Framework" and several Windows logging cheat sheets to help the security industry understand Windows logging, where to start and what to look for. Michael is co-developer of LOG-MD, a free tool that audits the settings, harvests and reports on malicious Windows log data and malicious system artifacts. Michael also ran BSides Texas for five years for the Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston cons. Michael is also blogs on HackerHurricane.com on various InfoSec topics.

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