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While the binary may be signed, its execution would still be considered an anomaly within a program execution dataset. The first use case is a fairly straightforward detection methodology.
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Move a Windows executable from System32 or SysWow64 on the target machine to a non-standard directory and plant the malicious DLL within the same folder.Plant a signed executable in a target directory along with the malicious DLL.Instead, threat actors or malware that have leveraged DLL side-loading commonly rely on two behaviors prior to executing an attack: X-Force has not observed many threat actors or malware overwriting existing binaries or modules on a system to execute a DLL side-loading attack because this could cause a system to crash or create errors that could lead to detection. While not the most common technique leveraged by threat actors, DLL side-loading is increasingly being used by ransomware operators, which have leveraged DLL side-loading to execute the ransomware payload to evade detection by security products.įor example, ransomware operator REvil leveraged a DLL side-loading vulnerability within a Windows Defender executable ( MsMpEng.exe) to load a malicious DLL named mpsvc.dll containing the ransomware payload. Due to the default search order built into Windows, the signed binary will load the malicious DLL and continue the malicious execution flow. X-Force has observed DLL side-loading used by the Metamorfo banking Trojan, which drops malicious MSI files that extract a signed binary and a malicious DLL to execute a second-stage malware loader.
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DLL Side-Loading Threat LandscapeĭLL side-loading is not a new technique, as the search-order hijacking vulnerability within Windows has existed since Windows XP. The first location that Windows will search is the directory from which the application is loaded.Ī DLL side-loading attack is an adversarial technique that aims to take advantage of weak library references and the default Windows search order by placing a malicious DLL file masquerading as a legitimate DLL on a system, which will be automatically loaded by a legitimate program.įor more information regarding DLL side-loading, reference MITRE ATT&CK Technique T1574.002. If a weak reference is made to a library, Windows attempts to locate the DLL through a pre-defined search order. If a manifest refers to only a library filename, it is considered a weak reference and is vulnerable to a DLL side-loading attack.
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A program manifest can include DLL redirections, filenames or full paths. A program manifest is an external file or embedded resource within an application used to manage the names and versions of shared side-by-side assemblies to which the application should load upon execution. In Microsoft Windows, programs can define which libraries are loaded at runtime by specifying a full path or using another mechanism such as a manifest. This post will talk about why IBM X-Force thinks the tool is needed, describe its functions and analyze some use cases.
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To provide a defensive counter-measure perspective for DLL side-loading, X-Force Incident Response has released SideLoaderHunter, which is a system profiling script and Sysmon configuration designed to identify evidence of side-loading on Windows systems. Recently, X-Force Red released a tool called Windows Feature Hunter, which identifies targets for dynamic link library (DLL) side-loading on a Windows system using Frida.