The Iron Panda Malware detection rule identifies potential adversary behavior involving suspicious file execution and network communication patterns commonly associated with malware activity. SOC teams should proactively hunt for this behavior in Azure Sentinel to detect and mitigate early-stage threats that may evade traditional detection methods.
YARA Rule
rule IronPanda_Malware3
{
meta:
description = "Iron Panda Malware"
author = "Florian Roth"
reference = "https://goo.gl/E4qia9"
date = "2015-09-16"
hash = "5cd2af844e718570ae7ba9773a9075738c0b3b75c65909437c43201ce596a742"
strings:
$s0 = "PluginDeflater.exe" fullword wide
$s1 = ".Deflated" fullword wide
$s2 = "PluginDeflater" fullword ascii
$s3 = "DeflateStream" fullword ascii /* Goodware String - occured 1 times */
$s4 = "CompressionMode" fullword ascii /* Goodware String - occured 4 times */
$s5 = "System.IO.Compression" fullword ascii /* Goodware String - occured 6 times */
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 10KB and all of them
}
This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:
This rule contains 6 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 process behavior.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes initiated by schtasks.exe with a known command line, e.g., schtasks.exe /run /tn "System Maintenance".
Scenario: Admin Performing Disk Cleanup
Description: An administrator using cleanmgr.exe (Disk Cleanup) to remove temporary files may be flagged due to similar file system activity.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes with cleanmgr.exe and a command line containing /sagerun:1 or /d for disk cleanup.
Scenario: Antivirus Scan Using Windows Defender
Description: Windows Defender or Microsoft Defender Antivirus may trigger the rule during a scheduled scan due to similar process execution patterns.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes with MsMpEng.exe or MsMpCmdRun.exe associated with Windows Defender.
Scenario: Log File Rotation by Log Management Tool
Description: A log management tool like logrotate (on Linux) or Event Viewer (on Windows) may generate similar activity to the malware.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes related to log rotation, such as logrotate or wevtutil.exe with specific command-line arguments.
Scenario: Software Update Deployment via SCCM
Description: A Software Center or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) update deployment may trigger the rule due to similar process execution.
Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes initiated by ccmexec.exe or ccmsetup.exe associated with SCCM update tasks.