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2017-12-12
The average corporate employee will receive 75 emails per day. So it’s no surprise that email is still an integral part of daily business processes. With two-thirds of all malware installed via email attachments in 2016 (according to the Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report), it is critical to ensure
2017-12-12

Recently, VMRay sponsored the 480th episode of the popular weekly information security podcast, Risky Business. On the podcast, Incident Response Expert Koen Van Impe, spoke to host Patrick Gray about how he uses VMRay Analyzer for automated malware analysis. Koen gave a great overview of the real-world challenges IR practitioners

2017-12-05
Welcome to the VMRay Malware Analysis Report Recap. Every month our Research Team provides a recap of the malware analysis reports posted to the VMRay Twitter account. This past November, our team analyzed a malicious Javascript file, the Ordinypt wiper, and a variant of the XZZX Cryptomix ransomware. Click the
2017-11-27
The VMRay App for Phantom seamlessly integrates Phantom’s security automation and orchestration platform with VMRay’s agentless malware detection and analysis. This enables security teams to mitigate the risk of potentially malicious files through fast, automated threat detection and analysis. In this video, we present a simple Phantom playbook that automatically
2017-11-07
Welcome to the VMRay Malware Analysis Report Recap. Every month our Research Team provides a recap of the malware analysis reports posted to the VMRay Twitter account. This past October, our team analyzed a Word document using a sandbox evasion technique, the execution of shellcode via Dynamic Data Exchange, and
2017-10-18
Malware Family: Vortex SHA256 Hash Value: bd61559c7dcae0edef672ea922ea5cf15496d18cc8c1cbebee9533295c2d2ea9 View the Full VMRay Analyzer Report Macros in Microsoft Office have been used extensively by malware authors as a mechanism to download and execute a malicious payload on a system. Defensive measures introduced by Microsoft such as disabling macros by default have not
2017-10-17
Malware Family: Emotet SHA256 455be9278594633944bfdada541725a55e5ef3b7189ae13be8b311848d473b53 View the Full VMRay Analyzer Report With security ever more tightly integrated into operating systems, malware authors often rely on the unwitting participation of an end user to enable malicious action. Social engineering techniques have evolved significantly over the years and last week the VMRay
This is the second blog in a two-part series describing how VMRay Analyzer’s Intelligent Monitoring capabilities remove the noise from malware analysis. Read part one. VMRay Analyzer’s hypervisor-based monitoring approach provides total visibility into the behavior of a sample under analysis and enables monitoring only parts of the system related
This blog post is the first in a two-part series describing how VMRay Analyzer’s Intelligent Monitoring capabilities remove the noise from malware analysis. In dealing with potentially malicious files, incident responders and IT security teams are swamped with information in the form of log files, reports, alerts, and notifications. As
In the malware analysis community, it is common to rename a malware sample to its hash value or add the hash to the filename. This helps analysts easily identify a sample and to store it with a unique filename. This strategy saves time and empowers collaboration. A drawback, however, is
Marketing departments of Cybersecurity vendors around the globe go into overdrive when they can shout from the rooftops that their solution is ‘agentless’. Sure, that sounds good, but why is this so important? And what is truly agentless? To appreciate the importance of an agentless approach, we’ll go old school
2017-08-21
Poweliks Malware – Filelessly Persistent
Malware Family: Poweliks Hash Value SHA256: 4727b7ea70d0fc00f96a28de7fa3d97fa 9d0b253bd63ae54fbbf0bd0c8b766bb View the Full Poweliks Malware Analysis Report One of the key features released in VMRay Analyzer v2.1 is the enhanced analysis of fileless malware (also referred to as “non-malware”). Fileless malware is defined by malware analysis expert Lenny Zeltser as “..malware that
Hash Value SHA256: 3a813df1c8f1e835cc98dd60b799c64e61 db51a259ee30b7235004ccb3c9df64 View the Full Password Protected Word Document Analysis Report Password protected documents are an effective method for malware to bypass anti-virus (AV) and other detection solutions. Typically the AV will not be able to parse the password required from the text of the email used
2017-07-17
In the new release of VMRay Analyzer v2.1, we've enhanced detection efficacy and fileless malware analysis for DFIR Specialists and CERTs.
2017-07-14
YARA is an open source tool that helps malware researchers identify and classify malware by family based on known binary patterns and strings. YARA works by ingesting rules and applying them against various elements of the analysis (such as files and registry keys) to flag potentially malicious files and processes.
2017-07-14
Malware Family: (Not)Petya Hash Value SHA256: 027cc450ef5f8c5f653329641ec1fed 91f694e0d229928963b30f6b0d7d3a745 View the Full Petya Analysis Report According to Microsoft, the Petya (also referred to as NotPetya/ExPetr) Ransomware attack started its initial infection through a compromise at the Ukrainian company M.E.Doc, a developer of tax accounting software. We took a closer look and
2017-06-19
404 Error Page Hides RAMNIT.A Worm in the Source Code
Malware Family: Win32/Ramnit Hash Values MD5: 089dc369616dafa44a9f7fefb18e8961 SHA1: c4a2430634b7ca7427d2c055dbbb1fb8cd42a285 SHA256: 4ebafa2738f11d73d06dddf18ce41cf 02c6913f431f2b383f7abaa0d04419f2f Most of the time, links aren’t dangerous without user interaction. Recently, we discovered an innocent-looking link for a JPG picture that prompts a user to activate ActiveX on IE. Leveraging a social engineering technique, if the user activates
2017-06-05
VMRay Analyzer Identifies Resume Containing Evasive Malware
Recently, we received a seemingly innocuous job application with an attached Word document called “resume.doc”. Let’s take a closer look at the malicious behavior embedded in this fake resume. Upon uploading the Word doc into VMRay Analyzer, the signature was sent to our built-in reputation service, where the file hash
Even though enterprises spend millions every year on information security they still remain vulnerable to persistent cybercriminals in a world where cybercrime like ransomware is pervasive. Organizations cannot afford to do the “bare minimum” when it comes to threat analysis. As the saying goes, ” ‘close’ only counts in horseshoes
2017-05-17
Jaff Ransomware Hiding in a PDF document
The challenge for a malware author today has more to do with creativity than a deep technical understanding. There are plenty of good trojan building tools out there to make the job easier. But once the author has a finished creation, the big challenge is how to get the finished
2017-05-15
Wanna Decryptor Worm Spreads Over MS17-010 Vulnerability
About one month ago, the Shadow Brokers hacker group published a set of NSA hacking tools, that included zero-day exploits. One of these exploits is known as the ETERNALBLUE Server Message Block Protocol (SMB) vulnerability (MS17-010). It was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. A malware author
2017-05-09
A new variant of Cerber ransomware is in the wild and has built-in anti-sandbox tools to detect hooking-based sandbox environments, as explained in this article by Cyphort. The limitations of a hooking-based approach, where a driver is injected into the target environment and ‘hooks’ API calls, allow the malware to
2017-05-09
In dealing with potentially malicious files, IT security teams in most organizations are challenged with arduous forensics and mitigation processes that involve a series of manual, repetitive tasks. The VMRay App for Phantom seamlessly integrates Phantom’s security automation and orchestration platform with VMRay’s agentless malware detection and analysis. This enables
2017-04-20
Multi-vendor security frameworks are a reality in virtually every enterprise. InfoSec teams need to manage that reality in order to protect the organization’s assets and data against targeted cyber-attacks and advanced malware. Deploying multi-vendor products means that there can often be challenges related to interoperability and integration. At VMRay, we
2017-04-20
A popular method to distribute malware (especially ransomware) is to send a JScript file (*.js) by E-Mail or prompt a user surfing the web to execute a file. The goal of this type of attack is to bypass filtering systems that warn users trying to open attachments with certain file
One of the key features in VMRay Analyzer 2.0 is the built-in reputation engine that identifies known malicious or known benign files in milliseconds. The addition of the reputation engine gives Incident Responders and Malware Analysts a powerful “One-Two” combination of rapid threat detection and detailed analysis of malware behavior.
2017-03-09
In boxing, the “One-Two” combination is an essential component of a fighter’s arsenal. A left jab followed by a right cross is one the most effective combinations a fighter can unleash on his opponent. In the fight against malware, it’s just as important for Malware Analysts and Incident Responders to
We have started to see malware authors use embedded Visual Basic (VBA) macros in many unconventional file types to attack hosts. In response to this trend, VMRay Analyzer V 2.0 now supports the analysis of Microsoft Access and Microsoft Publisher files. Support for analysis of new sample types means greater
2017-02-08
VMRay Analyzer V 2.0 will be released this week and we’ll be presenting it at the RSA Conference next week. The latest release has many new features including the addition of a built-in reputation engine that identifies known malicious or known benign files in milliseconds, support for the analysis of
2017-01-17
This past week, a new Ransomware variant called Spora was spotted in the wild. Currently, Spora only targets Russian-speaking users. What’s interesting about this Ransomware is that its payment site is so well designed, one could think they are running a legitimate business. The dropper for Spora is basically an
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