The hypothesis is that the detection of EquationGroup Tool - April Leak indicates potential adversary use of legacy malware associated with advanced persistent threats. A SOC team should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to identify and mitigate long-lived, stealthy threats that may have evaded traditional detection mechanisms.
YARA Rule
rule EquationGroup_Toolset_Apr17_Educatedscholartouch_1_0_0 {
meta:
description = "Detects EquationGroup Tool - April Leak"
author = "Florian Roth"
reference = "https://steemit.com/shadowbrokers/@theshadowbrokers/lost-in-translation"
date = "2017-04-15"
hash1 = "f4b958a0d3bb52cb34f18ea293d43fa301ceadb4a259d3503db912d0a9a1e4d8"
strings:
$x1 = "[!] A vulnerable target will not respond." fullword ascii
$x2 = "[-] Target NOT Vulernable" fullword ascii
condition:
( uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 30KB and 1 of them )
}
This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:
This rule contains 2 string patterns in its detection logic.
Scenario: Scheduled System Maintenance Task
Description: A legitimate system maintenance task, such as schtasks.exe running a cleanup job, may trigger the rule due to similar command-line arguments or file names.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes initiated by schtasks.exe with known maintenance job names (e.g., Cleanup-System-Resources).
Scenario: Admin PowerShell Script Execution
Description: An administrator may run a PowerShell script using powershell.exe that includes similar command patterns to the EquationGroup tool, such as Invoke-Command or Start-Process.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the command line includes -Command or -File with known admin scripts (e.g., C:\Windows\System32\scripts\maintenance.ps1).
Scenario: Windows Update or Patching Job
Description: A Windows Update or patching job using wusa.exe or dism.exe may generate similar network activity or file access patterns.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes associated with wusa.exe or dism.exe during scheduled update windows.
Scenario: Log Management Tool Configuration
Description: A log management tool like Splunk or ELK Stack may execute scripts or binaries that resemble EquationGroup behavior when configuring data ingestion.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes initiated by splunk.exe, logstash.exe, or kibana.exe with known configuration tasks.
Scenario: Antivirus or EDR Agent Activity
Description: Antivirus or EDR agents (e.g., Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne) may perform similar actions to the EquationGroup tool, such as file scanning or process monitoring.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes associated with