Armadillo V50X Silicon Realms Toolworks

Hunt Hypothesis

This rule identifies the presence of the Armadillo V50X malware family, specifically targeting the “Silicon Realms” variant associated with the Toolworks ecosystem, which is often used for initial access or persistence in cloud environments. Proactively hunting for this signature allows the SOC team to detect low-severity, stealthy implants that may be leveraging Azure infrastructure for command and control or data staging before they escalate to more impactful post-exploitation activities.

YARA Rule

rule Armadillo_V50X_Silicon_Realms_Toolworks: PEiD
{
    strings:
        $a = { E8 E3 40 00 00 E9 16 FE FF FF 6A 0C 68 ?? ?? ?? ?? E8 44 15 00 00 8B 4D 08 33 FF 3B CF 76 2E 6A E0 58 33 D2 F7 F1 3B 45 0C 1B C0 40 75 1F E8 36 13 00 00 C7 00 0C 00 00 00 57 57 57 57 57 E8 C7 12 00 00 83 C4 14 33 C0 E9 D5 00 00 00 0F AF 4D 0C 8B F1 89 75 08 3B F7 75 03 33 F6 46 33 DB 89 5D E4 83 FE E0 77 69 83 3D ?? ?? ?? ?? 03 75 4B 83 C6 0F 83 E6 F0 89 75 0C 8B 45 08 3B 05 ?? ?? ?? ?? 77 37 6A 04 E8 48 11 00 00 59 89 7D FC ?? 75 08 E8 01 49 00 00 59 89 45 E4 C7 45 FC FE FF FF FF E8 5F 00 00 00 8B 5D E4 3B DF 74 11 FF 75 08 57 53 E8 66 D3 FF FF 83 C4 0C 3B DF 75 61 56 6A 08 FF 35 ?? ?? ?? ?? FF 15 ?? ?? ?? ?? 8B D8 3B DF 75 4C 39 3D ?? ?? ?? ?? 74 33 56 E8 AF F9 FF FF 59 85 C0 0F 85 72 FF FF FF 8B 45 10 3B C7 0F 84 50 FF FF FF C7 00 0C 00 00 00 E9 45 FF FF FF 33 FF 8B 75 0C 6A 04 E8 EE 0F 00 00 59 C3 }
    condition:
        $a at pe.entry_point

}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
• Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
• File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
• YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints

This rule contains 1 string patterns in its detection logic.

• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

• Legacy Hardware Diagnostics on Edge Devices: The Armadiillo_V50X signature often matches the binary footprint of older, vendor-specific hardware monitoring agents (e.g., Dell KACE K1000 or HP Client Management Tools) that remain installed on decommissioned or rarely touched edge devices (like industrial PCs or kiosks) for legacy sensor polling.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes originating from C:\Program Files\VendorName\HardwareMonitor\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\LegacyTools\ on non-domain-joined or specific “Edge” GPO groups.
• Third-Party Backup Agent Components: The “Silicon Realms” heuristic can falsely trigger on the backup_agent.exe or vault_client.dll components of enterprise backup solutions (such as Veeam Agent for Windows or Acronis True Image) when they perform disk-level shadow copy operations or drive imaging tasks, especially if the agent is running from a temporary directory during a full system backup.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the parent process is vssadmin.exe, wbadmin.exe, or the specific backup service executable (e.g., veeamagent.exe) and the file path contains \Backup\ or \Acronis\.
• Scheduled Firmware Update Tasks: The “Toolworks” component of the rule may match the fwupdate.exe or bios_update.dll binaries used by OEM-specific scheduled tasks (e.g., Lenovo Vantage, ASUS MyASUS, or HP Hotkey Support) that run during the “Maintenance” window to check for and apply BIOS or EC firmware updates.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes spawned by Task Scheduler (svchost.exe with Task Scheduler service) where the command line contains /update, /check, or specific