Equation Group hack tool leaked by ShadowBrokers- file envisioncollision

Hunt Hypothesis

The hunt hypothesis detects potential adversary use of the Equation Group hack tool, envisoncollision, which may indicate advanced persistent threat activity. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate potential compromise from sophisticated, previously unknown attack vectors.

YARA Rule

rule EquationGroup_envisioncollision {
   meta:
      description = "Equation Group hack tool leaked by ShadowBrokers- file envisioncollision"
      author = "Florian Roth"
      reference = "https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/dont-forget-your-base-867d304a94b1"
      date = "2017-04-08"
      hash1 = "75d5ec573afaf8064f5d516ae61fd105012cbeaaaa09c8c193c7b4f9c0646ea1"
   strings:
      $x1 = "mysql \\$D --host=\\$H --user=\\$U --password=\\\"\\$P\\\" -e \\\"select * from \\$T" fullword ascii
      $x2 = "Window 3: $0 -Uadmin -Ppassword -i127.0.0.1 -Dipboard -c\\\"sleep 500|nc" fullword ascii
      $s3 = "$ua->agent(\"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)\");" fullword ascii
      $s4 = "$url = $host . \"/admin/index.php?adsess=\" . $enter . \"&app=core&module=applications&section=hooks&do=install_hook\";" fullword ascii
   condition:
      ( uint16(0) == 0x2123 and filesize < 20KB and 1 of ($x*) ) or ( 2 of them )
}

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 5 string patterns in its detection logic.

References

False Positive Guidance

Scenario: Legitimate Use of envisoncollision Tool by Security Team
Description: A security analyst is using the envisoncollision tool (part of the Equation Group toolkit) to analyze malware samples or perform forensic analysis.
Filter/Exclusion: Check for process owner (user == "security_analyst") and presence of known forensic tools in the command line (process.name contains "volatility" or "strings").
Scenario: Scheduled Job for System Maintenance
Description: A scheduled task runs a script that uses envisoncollision to clean up temporary files or perform disk cleanup.
Filter/Exclusion: Filter by process name (process.name == "cleanmgr.exe") or check for scheduled task context (process.parent.name == "schtasks.exe").
Scenario: Admin Task for Log Analysis
Description: An administrator is using envisoncollision to parse and analyze system logs for troubleshooting purposes.
Filter/Exclusion: Check for administrative privileges (user == "admin") and presence of log analysis tools in the command line (process.name contains "logparser" or "eventvwr").
Scenario: Legitimate File Integrity Monitoring Tool
Description: A file integrity monitoring tool (e.g., Tripwire) uses envisoncollision as part of its hash calculation process.
Filter/Exclusion: Check for known FIM tool paths (process.path contains "tripwire") or hash calculation keywords in the command line (command_line contains "hash" or "checksum").
Scenario: Red Team Training Exercise
Description: During a red team training session, the envisoncollision tool is used to simulate an attack and test defenses.
Filter/Exclusion: Check for training environment indicators (`process.path contains