MacroMedia ShockWave Movie file

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis targets the presence of ShockWave movie files, which are frequently used by adversaries to deliver malicious payloads or execute code through legacy Flash-based content. Proactively hunting for these files in Azure Sentinel helps identify potential initial access vectors or persistence mechanisms that may have been introduced via web downloads or email attachments before being executed.

YARA Rule

rule MacroMedia_ShockWave_Movie_file: PEiD
{
    strings:
        $a = { 46 57 53 }
    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

• Scenario: Legacy Adobe Flash/Shockwave content is embedded in internal training portals or product demo pages, causing browsers or specific media players to download .swf or related Shockwave files to the local disk for caching.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude file paths under C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\Flash Player\Cache or C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp where the parent process is a known browser (e.g., chrome.exe, msedge.exe, firefox.exe) or Adobe Media Player.
• Scenario: IT administrators or developers use Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) or Adobe Media Encoder to test, convert, or archive legacy multimedia assets, resulting in the creation or modification of Shockwave-compatible files on the workstation.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files located in project directories (e.g., C:\Projects\, D:\Media\) when the parent process is Animate.exe, MediaEncoder.exe, or AdobeBridge.exe, and the user account belongs to the IT-Admins or Creative-Team security group.
• Scenario: Scheduled backup or sync jobs (e.g., Veeam, Commvault, or custom PowerShell scripts) copy legacy multimedia repositories from file servers to local staging areas for deduplication or pre-transfer validation, temporarily creating Shockwave movie files on client workstations.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files in temporary staging directories (e.g., C:\BackupStaging\, D:\SyncTemp\) when the parent process is a backup agent (e.g., VeeamAgent.exe, commvaultagent.exe) or a scheduled task service (svchost.exe with specific task IDs), and the file age is less than 24 hours.
• Scenario: End