Finding and Decoding Malicious PowerShell Scripts

PowerShell. It's everywhere. I've started coming across more and more malicious PowerShell scripts.

Why do attackers love using PowerShell? Because it's native to many versions of Windows, provides full access to the WMI and .Net Framework and can execute malicious code in memory thereby evading AV. Oh yeah - did I mention a lack of logging too?

During the course of my analysis on these types of cases, I have found several indications that PowerShell has been utilized by an attacker. These include installed services, registry entries and PowerShell scripts on disk. If logging is enabled, that can provide some nice artifacts as well. The perspective of my post is going to be from that of an analyst that may not be too familiar with PowerShell. I am going to discuss how I locate malicious PowerShell artifacts during my analysis, as well as some methods I use to decode obfuscated PowerShell scripts. This will be Part 1 in a 3 part series written over the next few weeks.

Part 1: PowerShell Scripts Installed as Services
First up to bat is my favorite - PowerShell scripts that I find as installed services in the System event log. To find these, one of the first things I do is look for Event ID 7045. This event occurs when a service is installed on a system.  An example of a PowerShell script installed as a service is shown below:

Of note are the following red flags:

1) Random Service Name
2) The Service File Name has "%COMSPEC%", which is the environment variable for cmd.exe
3) A reference to the powershell executable
4) Base 64 encoded data

So how might an entry like this make its way into an event log? While there are various ways to do this, one method would be to use the built in Windows Service Control Manger to create a service:

sc.exe create MyService binPath=%COMSPEC% powershell.exe -nop -w hidden -encodedcommand <insertbase64>

sc start MyService

The above commands create a service named "MyService" and uses the binPath=  option to launch cmd.exe which in turns executes the PowerShell code.  

An interesting thing to note - there may be some failed errors logged after the service is created in this manner. The errors do not mean that it was unsuccessful. Windows was just expecting a "real" service binary to be installed and "times out" waiting for the "service" to report back. How do I know this? In my testing I was able to set up a successful reverse shell using the above methodology, which generated a failed service error on the Windows machine. On the left is a Metaspolit session I started on an attack virtual machine. On the right is a Windows 7 host virtual machine. Although the Windows 7 machine states "The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion," a reverse shell was still opened in the Metatsploit session:

Below are the two corresponding event log entries, 7000 and 7009, made in the System event log. Although the 7009 message states "The FakeDriver service failed to start.." this does not mean that the command inside the binPath variable did not execute successfully. So beware, interpreting these as in indication that the PowerShell did not execute may be false:

The 7045 System event log PoweShell command is encoded in base64 and python can be used to decode it. Interesting note - this base64 code is in Unicode, so there will be extra parameter specified when decoding it. (For display reasons I have truncated the base64 text - you would need to include the full base64 text to decode it):

import base64
code="JABjACAAPQAgAEAAIgAKAFsARABsAGwASQBtAHAA...."
base64.b64decode(code).decode('UTF16')

Here is what the decoded PowerShell command looks like. A quick sweep of the code reveals some telling signs - references to creating a Net Socket with the TCP protocol and an IP address:

This is similar to the type of code that Meterpreter uses to set up a reverse shell. The above PowerShell code was pretty easy to decode, however, it's usually more involved.

Next up is another example - this time its just "regular" base64. Note again the %COMSPEC% variable and reference to powershell.exe:

Again, Python can be used to decode the base64 encoded PowerShell:
 

This time, the decoded output is less than helpful. If we go back and take a look at the System event log entry more closely, we can see that there are references to "Gzip" and "Decompress":

Ahh.. so thinking in reverse, this data may have been compressed with Gzip then encoded using base64. Using python, I am going to write out the decoded base64 into a file so I can try unzipping it:

import base64
code="H4sICCSPh1kCADEAT..."
decoded=base64.b64decode(code)
f=open("decoded.gzip",'wb')
f.write(decoded)
f.close

Using 7zip I am successfully able to unpack the gzip file! Since I did not get any errors, I may be on the right track:

Now if I open the unzipped file with a text editor, hopefully I will see some PowerShell code:

Ahh..what??? Ok - time to take a peek in a hex editor:

Not much help either. I am thinking this may be shellcode. As a next step, I am going to run it through PDF Stream Dumper's shellcode analysis tool, scdbg.exe:

Ta-Da! scdbg.exe was able to pull out some IOCs for me from the shellcode.

To summarize, here are the steps I took took to decode this PowerShell entry:

• Decoded the base64 PowerShell string
• Wrote out the decoded base64 to a zip file
• Decompressed the Gzip file using 7zip
• Ran the binary output through scdbg.exe

As demonstrated above, there can be several layers to get though before the golds strikes.

One final example:

This looks familiar. First step, decoding the Unicode base64 gives the following result - which contains more base64 code inside the base64 code! :

Obfuscated, then obfuscated again with compression. This is very typical to what I have seen in cases. This time because there is no reference to "gzip" in the compression text, I am just going to save the second round of base64 to a regular zip file and try to open again with 7zip:

decoded2="nVPvT9swEP2ev+IUR...."
f=open("decoded2.zip,"wb")
f.write(base64.b64decode(decoded2)
f.close()

When trying to open up the zipped file with 7Zip I get an error:

And the same with the built in Window's utility:

I also tried various python libraries to unzip the compressed file. After some research, I discovered that the compression used is related to some .Net libraries. Now, since I am a python gal, I wanted to figure out how to decompress this using Python so I could easily implement it into my scripting. Since Python is cross compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac, .Net is not native to its core. As such, I used Iron Python to do my bidding. (Now yes, you could absolutely use PowerShell to decode this, but what can I say - I wanted to do it Python)

According to the Iron Python website "IronPython is an open-source implementation of the Python programming language which is tightly integrated with the .NET Framework. IronPython can use the .NET Framework and Python libraries, and other .NET languages can use Python code just as easily." Neat. Installing it on Windows is a breeze - just an MSI. Once installed, you simple run the scripts calling ipy.exe (I'll show an example later).

Armed with this, I was able to write some python code (io_decompress.py) that decompressed the zip file using the python IO compression Library:

#import required .Net libraries

from System.IO import BinaryReader, StreamReader, MemoryStream
from System.IO.Compression import CompressionMode, DeflateStream
from System import Array, Byte
from System.IO import FileStream, FileMode
from System.Text import Encoding
from System.IO import File

#functions to decompress the data
def decompress(data):
    io_zip = DeflateStream(MemoryStream(data), CompressionMode.Decompress)
    str = StreamReader(io_zip).ReadToEnd()
    io_zip.Close()
    return str

print "Decompressing stream..."
compressedBytes = File.ReadAllBytes("decoded2.zip")
decompressedString = decompress(compressedBytes)

f = open("decompressed.txt", "wb")
f.write(decompressedString)
f.close()

To run the script using IronPython was easy: ipy.exe io_decompress.py:

I was able to open the decompressed.txt file created by the script and was rewarded with the following plain text PowerShell script. Once again, note the IP address:

To summarize the steps taken for this event log entry:

• Decoded Unicode base64
• Decoded embedded base64 code
• Decompressed resulting decoded base64 code

As we have seen from the three examples above, there are various techniques attackers may use to obfuscate their PowerShell entries. These may be used in various combinations, some of which I have demonstrated above. The steps taken vary for each case, and within each case itself. I usually see 2-3 variations in each case that are pushed out to hundreds of systems over the course of several months. Sometimes the steps might be:base64, base64,decompress, shellcode. It might also be: base64, decompress, base64, code, base64, shellcode. See how quickly this becomes like a Matryoshka doll? When I wrap up the series, I will talk about ways to automate the process. If you are using something like Harlan Carvy's timelines scripts to get text outputs, it becomes pretty easy.

So how to go about finding these and decoding them in your exams?

• Look for event log ID 7045 with "%COMSPEC%, powershell.exe, -encodedcommand, -w hidden , "From Base64String" etc.
  
• Look for "Gzipstream" or "[IO.Compression.CompressionMode]::Decompress" for hints on what type of compression was used
• Try running the resulting binary files through sdbg.exe, shellcode2exe or other malware analysis tools

Part 2 will be about PowerShell in the registry, followed by Part 3 on PowerShell logging and pulling information from memory.

Onion Peeler: Batch Tor Lookup Program

Logs, Logs, Logs. I see, IPs. When reviewing log files for suspect activity it can be helpful to look up information related to IP addresses. There is a great utility for this by Nirsoft called IPNetinfo. You can import a whole list of IP addresses and it will give you "the owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and email), and more."

When I am reviewing log files, an IP address associated with a foreign country may peak my interest. Another check I like to do is look for activity associated with Tor nodes. In a corporate environment, a user accessing a system from a Tor exit node may be a red flag.

When I am checking an IP address to see if it is associated with a Tor exit node I will use a website like ExoneraTor. It lets me put in an IP address and a date, and lets me know if the IP address is associate with a Tor relay. While this is a great tool, if I have a list of IP addresses to check, it's not very efficient. To that end, I wrote a little program to help automate the process of checking a list of IP addresses against Tor Relays and Bridges, Onion Peeler.

Onion Peeler is written in Python and uses OnionPy. OnionPy is a wrapper for the OnionOO Tor Api. Using OnionPy, Onion Peeler caches a local copy of the Tor exit nodes and performs a check for a list of supplied IP addresses. What's nice is that if you have a list of sensitive IPs, the information is not shared and is kept locally:

It will output a list of matches:

Since it's in Python, the program is cross-platform compatible. I've tested it on Windows, Linux and Mac. It just requires OnionPy, which can be installed using "pip install OnionPy". I also have a compiled Windows Executable if you don't have Python installed. It requires an Internet connection as the initial query grabs the latest Tor nodes from OnionOO. I am thinking about adding in a way to store an offline copy in the next version as well as add in additional details about the Tor nodes (first seen, last seen etc.)

It took about a minute to check 8,000 IP addresses. Of course, a bigger list will take longer, so be patient.

Code and program are available on my github.

When Windows Lies

Wait, What? Windows lies? I believe so...

I worked a case where I checked the Windows Install date and it was a couple days before we received the system. GREAT....did the user reformat their drive and do a fresh install before handing over the laptop? Did they reinstall the OS? This would not have been the first time a laptop or system was rebuilt after an incident (either on purpose or by accident).

Checking basic information like the Operating System and Installation date can help a examiner prioritize the systems they need to examine and check for evidence spoliation issues. If you have 20 systems to go through, and the Operating System has been installed AFTER the date of the incident you may want to focus on some other systems first. In civil or criminal cases, an installation date right before you receive the evidence may raise some red flags.

So now that we have established why the Operating Installation date can be important, there is a registry key you can retrieve it from, HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. RegRipper has a great plugin for this, named OSVersion that pulls not only the OS version, but the install date from the registry key . Running this against my test system I got the following output:

----------------------------------------
winver v.20081210
(Software) Get Windows version

ProductName = Windows 10 Home
InstallDate = Fri Feb  3 15:58:47 2017
----------------------------------------

What??? Install date of February 3rd, 2017?? 2 weeks ago??? Since this is my system, I know I did not install Windows 10 February 3rd. I have had Windows 10 Home since the roll out in 2015!

Just to be a thorough, I verified the date was being parsed correctly and looked at the raw data in the registry:
 

Install date is  0x5894a8b7 which is Fri, 03 February 2017 15:58:47 UTC.

Ok, one last check... running the systeminfo command it clearly shows "Original Install Date" as  2/3/2017 8:58:47 AM. I am UTC -7, so this information matches my above results.

OK - Windows, I think you are lying to me. I'm hurt. But, to add insult to injury, with some more digging around I find out that YOU MESSED WITH MY LOGS during this supposed install.

I have a snapshot of my system previous to the supposed install date of February 3rd, 2017. Note the created dates on the Event Logs - 12/12/2015 and a size of 20MB:

 Now I look at the current created dates and files sizes of my event logs. Note that the created date is the same of this supposed install date, 2/3/2017. Not only that, but my log files are much smaller, some about 2MB:

When I opened my logs, as expected, there are no entries before 2/3/2017, and the first entry matches with this supposed install date:

I was curious what may have caused this. Since Windows updates have caused issues with artifact timestamps before, such as USB devices, I checked the Windows Update history. Sure enough, there was a Windows update, "Feature update to Windows 10, version 1607" which ran on 2/3/2017.This date matches the supposed install date:

Since my update history contained more than one update ran on 2/3/17, I wanted to check some other Windows 10 systems to see what I could find out. I knew approximately when both of these systems  had their operating systems installed, and both had incorrect installation dates listed, as well as the Feature Update v. 1607 that ran on the same day.


System 1 (Windows 10 Home)
Registry Install Date: 9/27/2016 11:22:39
Event Log created Dates: 9/27/2016 11:11
Feature update to Windows 10, version 1607:  9/27/2016

System 2 (Window 10 Pro)
Registry Install Date: 10/1/2016 3:47
Log created Dates: 10/1/2016 3:42
Feature update to Windows 10, version 1607: 10/1/2016

So, my working hypothesis is that the Feature update to Windows 10, version 1607 is updating the Windows Installation time and deleting the logs.

This may just be a matter of semantics.. maybe "Operating Install Date" really means - latest major version update??? This artifact may be open to misinterpretation if that is the case.

Why is this important?

Possible Incorrect conclusion of evidence spoliation
Imagine you are working a civil case where the opposing side is supposed to produce and turn over a laptop. If you see the installation date was recent, you might incorrectly conclude that they installed the OS right before handing over the system. Or, in Incident Response you may incorrectly assume that the operating system was just installed and there may not be too many goodies to find.

 
You loose event logs
Event logs can make up a critical component of an exam. In the case I was working, this update happened right before I received the laptop. The event logs only had about a day in them. Yes, there may be backups, or a SIEM collecting them, but it just makes the exam more involved. 

Other Artifacts????
These are just the two inconsistencies I have found so far... there are probably  more...

I would like to test this more formally by setting up a virtual machine and tracking the updates to see what happens, however, based upon the systems I have looked at, I think Windows is lying.

As always, correlating findings against multiple artifacts could help determine if this install date is accurate.

Just a note and something else to be aware of - in many corporate environments the Operating System install date may be incorrect due to clones/images being used to  push out machines. However, I don't consider this as Windows lying because the date would reflect the install date of the original before it was cloned.