Primary threat research from Elastic Security Labs
19 October 2023
Fall 2023 Global Threat Report Outro
This article highlights the essential contributions to the Global Threat Report from the Security Intelligence team, and describes three major phenomena impacting the threat landscape.
Featured
Security Research
View all500ms to midnight: XZ / liblzma backdoor
Elastic Security Labs is releasing an initial analysis of the XZ Utility backdoor, including YARA rules, osquery, and KQL searches to identify potential compromises.
Unveiling malware behavior trends
An analysis of a diverse dataset of Windows malware extracted from more than 100,000 samples revealing insights into the most prevalent tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Monitoring Okta threats with Elastic Security
This article guides readers through establishing an Okta threat detection lab, emphasizing the importance of securing SaaS platforms like Okta. It details creating a lab environment with the Elastic Stack, integrating SIEM solutions, and Okta.
Ransomware in the honeypot: how we capture keys with sticky canary files
This article describes the process of capturing encryption keys from ransomware using Elastic Defend ransomware protection.
Malware Analysis
View allIntroduction to Hex-Rays decompilation internals
In this publication, we delve into Hex-Rays microcode and explore techniques for manipulating the generated CTree to deobfuscate and annotate decompiled code.
Getting gooey with GULOADER: deobfuscating the downloader
Elastic Security Labs walks through the updated GULOADER analysis countermeasures.
Elastic catches DPRK passing out KANDYKORN
Elastic Security Labs exposes an attempt by the DPRK to infect blockchain engineers with novel macOS malware.
GHOSTPULSE haunts victims using defense evasion bag o' tricks
Elastic Security Labs reveals details of a new campaign leveraging defense evasion capabilities to infect victims with malicious MSIX executables.
Campaigns
View allPIKABOT, I choose you!
Elastic Security Labs observed new PIKABOT campaigns, including an updated version. PIKABOT is a widely deployed loader malicious actors utilize to distribute additional payloads.
Initial research exposing JOKERSPY
Explore JOKERSPY, a recently discovered campaign that targets financial institutions with Python backdoors. This article covers reconnaissance, attack patterns, and methods of identifying JOKERSPY in your network.
Elastic charms SPECTRALVIPER
Elastic Security Labs has discovered the P8LOADER, POWERSEAL, and SPECTRALVIPER malware families targeting a national Vietnamese agribusiness. REF2754 shares malware and motivational elements of the REF4322 and APT32 activity groups.
PHOREAL Malware Targets the Southeast Asian Financial Sector
Elastic Security discovered PHOREAL malware, which is targeting Southeast Asia financial organizations, particularly those in the Vietnamese financial sector.
Groups & Tactics
View allSinking macOS Pirate Ships with Elastic Behavior Detections
This research looks at a recently found macOS malware campaign using the macOS Endpoint Security Framework paired with the Elastic Agent to hunt and detect the behaviors this malware exhibits.
Unmasking a Financial Services Intrusion: REF0657
Elastic Security Labs details an intrusion leveraging open-source tooling and different post-exploitation techniques targeting the financial services industry in South Asia.
Elastic catches DPRK passing out KANDYKORN
Elastic Security Labs exposes an attempt by the DPRK to infect blockchain engineers with novel macOS malware.
GHOSTPULSE haunts victims using defense evasion bag o' tricks
Elastic Security Labs reveals details of a new campaign leveraging defense evasion capabilities to infect victims with malicious MSIX executables.
Perspectives
GenerativeAI
Accelerating Elastic detection tradecraft with LLMs
Learn more about how Elastic Security Labs has been focused on accelerating our detection engineering workflows by tapping into more generative AI capabilities.
Using LLMs and ESRE to find similar user sessions
In our previous article, we explored using the GPT-4 Large Language Model (LLM) to condense Linux user sessions. In the context of the same experiment, we dedicated some time to examine sessions that shared similarities. These similar sessions can subsequently aid the analysts in identifying related suspicious activities.
Using LLMs to summarize user sessions
In this publication, we will talk about lessons learned and key takeaways from our experiments using GPT-4 to summarize user sessions.
Exploring the Future of Security with ChatGPT
Recently, OpenAI announced APIs for engineers to integrate ChatGPT and Whisper models into their apps and products. For some time, engineers could use the REST API calls for older models and otherwise use the ChatGPT interface through their website.
Tools
View allSTIXy Situations: ECSaping your threat data
Structured threat data is commonly formatted using STIX. To help get this data into Elasticsearch, we’re releasing a Python script that converts STIX to an ECS format to be ingested into your stack.
Into The Weeds: How We Run Detonate
Explore the technical implementation of the Detonate system, including sandbox creation, the supporting technology, telemetry collection, and how to blow stuff up.
Click, Click… Boom! Automating Protections Testing with Detonate
To automate this process and test our protections at scale, we built Detonate, a system that is used by security research engineers to measure the efficacy of our Elastic Security solution in an automated fashion.
Unpacking ICEDID
ICEDID is known to pack its payloads using custom file formats and a custom encryption scheme. We are releasing a set of tools to automate the unpacking process and help analysts and the community respond to ICEDID.