094. Detecting ClickOnce Abuse

Hello everyone! Today I've spotted another technique I don't see used ITW very often. I'm talking about ClickOnce. It's a Microsoft technology that enables the user to install and run a Windows-based smart client application by clicking a link in a web page.

I've see this technique in the report on APT-C-47. The adversary leveraged phishing to deliver a link to a malicious ClickOnce file (.appref-ms), which starts the kill chain.

Of course, you can hunt for execution of such files from suspicious locations, for example, Outlook-related folders:

event_type: "processcreatewin"

AND

cmdline: ("appref-ms" AND "Content.Outlook")

If you want to learn more about ClickOnce abuse, here's a great presentation by William Joseph Burke IV.

See you tomorrow!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

082. Huniting for Malicious Browser Extensions

Image
Hello everyone! Malicious browser extensions are stopping to be an exotic threat. For example,  Rilide . It was first reported in April 2023, but became a common threat, and this report is another proof of it. Can we hunt for such extensions? Of course, yes! For example, usually threats like Rilide modify browser-reated LNK files to run it with " --load-extension " argument, like this: chrome.exe --load-extension="C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\MalExt" It means we can hunt for execution of common Chromium-based browsers with this argument: event_type: "processcreatewin" AND proc_file_name: ("chrome.exe" OR "brave.exe" OR "opera.exe" OR "msedge.exe")  AND cmdline: "load-extension" I'm sure you'll get false positives, but this is what we expect from threat hunting, right? Proper filtering will help you, I'm sure! See you tomorrow!
Read more

033. Free Google Threat Intelligence Course

Image
Hello everyone! Everybody loves free courses, right? Have you missed a free course on Google Threat Intelligence ? If the answer is "Yes", it's your chance to check it!  I like this course as it not only overviews the capabilities of Google Threat Intelligence as a product, but also covers various threat intelligence use cases, for example, how to empower incident response and forensic investigations or how to use it for adversary hunting and tracking. I've already got my completion badge: What about you? See you tomorrow!
Read more

163. A Curious Case of Iediagcmd.exe Abuse

Image
Hello everyone! Reading Check Point's report on Stealth Falcon activities, I spotted an interesting way of abusing iediagcmd.exe . The adversary uses malicious  .url files. The URL parameter points to iediagcmd.exe . Normally this executable spawns additional processes to collect diagnostic data, including route.exe . The working folder is changed by the .url to the attacker-controlled WebDAV server, so iediagcmd.exe runs the route.exe from \\summerartcamp[.]net@ssl@443/DavWWWRoot\OSYxaOjr\route.exe  (Horus Loader) instead of a legitimate one in system32 folder. Of course, we can use it for detection, and search for  iediagcmd.exe executing files from WebDAV servers, for example: event_type: "processcreatewin" AND proc_p_file_path: "iediagcmd.exe" AND proc_file_path: "DavWWWRoot" See you tomorrow!
Read more