Adversaries may employ various system checks to detect and avoid virtualization and analysis environments. This may include changing behaviors based on the results of checks for the presence of artifacts indicative of a virtual machine environment (VME) or sandbox. If the adversary detects a VME, they may alter their malware to disengage from the victim or conceal the core functions of the implant. They may also search for VME artifacts before dropping secondary or additional payloads. Adversaries may use the information learned from Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors.

Specific checks may will vary based on the target and/or adversary, but may involve behaviors such as Windows Management Instrumentation, PowerShell, System Information Discovery, and Query Registry to obtain system information and search for VME artifacts. Adversaries may search for VME artifacts in memory, processes, file system, hardware, and/or the Registry. Adversaries may use scripting to automate these checks into one script and then have the program exit if it determines the system to be a virtual environment.

Checks could include generic system properties such as uptime and samples of network traffic. Adversaries may also check the network adapters addresses, CPU core count, and available memory/drive size.

Other common checks may enumerate services running that are unique to these applications, installed programs on the system, manufacturer/product fields for strings relating to virtual machine applications, and VME-specific hardware/processor instructions.^[1] In applications like VMWare, adversaries can also use a special I/O port to send commands and receive output.

Hardware checks, such as the presence of the fan, temperature, and audio devices, could also be used to gather evidence that can be indicative a virtual environment. Adversaries may also query for specific readings from these devices.^[2]

ID: T1497.001

Sub-technique of: T1497

Tactics: Defense Evasion, Discovery

Platforms: Linux, Windows, macOS

Data Sources: Process command-line parameters, Process monitoring

Defense Bypassed: Anti-virus, Host forensic analysis, Signature-based detection, Static File Analysis

Contributors: Deloitte Threat Library Team

Version: 1.0

Created: 06 March 2020

Last Modified: 01 July 2020

Version Permalink

Live Version

Procedure Examples

Name	Description
Attor	Attor can detect whether it is executed in some virtualized or emulated environment by searching for specific artifacts, such as communication with I/O ports and using VM-specific instructions.^[23]
BadPatch	BadPatch attempts to detect if it is being run in a Virtual Machine (VM) using a WMI query for disk drive name, BIOS, and motherboard information. ^[10]
Denis	Denis ran multiple system checks, looking for processor and register characteristics, to evade emulation and analysis.^[25]
Dyre	Dyre can detect sandbox analysis environments by inspecting the process list and Registry.^[5]^[6]
EvilBunny	EvilBunny for a number of specific processes and the length of its own name to identify if the malware is in a sandbox environment.^[20]
FinFisher	FinFisher obtains the hardware device list and checks if the MD5 of the vendor ID is equal to a predefined list in order to check for sandbox/virtualized environments.^[15]
Frankenstein	Frankenstein has used WMI queries to check if various security applications were running, including VMWare and Virtualbox.^[26]
GravityRAT	GravityRAT uses WMI to check the BIOS and manufacturer information for strings like "VMWare", "Virtual", and "XEN" and another WMI request to get the current temperature of the hardware to determine if it's a virtual machine environment. ^[9]
Okrum	Okrum's loader can check the amount of physical memory and terminates itself if the host has less than 1.5 Gigabytes of physical memory in total.^[24]
OopsIE	OopsIE performs several anti-VM and sandbox checks on the victim's machine. One technique the group has used was to perform a WMI query `SELECT * FROM MSAcpi_ThermalZoneTemperature` to check the temperature to see if it’s running in a virtual environment.^[2]
OSX_OCEANLOTUS.D	OSX_OCEANLOTUS.D has a variant that checks a number of system parameters to see if it is being run on real hardware or in a virtual machine environment.^[21]
PlugX	PlugX checks if VMware tools is running in the background by searching for any process named "vmtoolsd". ^[12]
PoetRAT	PoetRAT checked the size of the hard drive to determine if it was being run in a sandbox environment. In the event of sandbox detection, it would delete itself by overwriting the malware scripts with the contents of "License.txt" and exiting.^[22]
Pupy	Pupy has a module that checks a number of indicators on the system to determine if its running on a virtual machine.^[4]
Remcos	Remcos searches for Sandboxie and VMware on the system.^[3]
RogueRobin	RogueRobin uses WMI to check BIOS version for VBOX, bochs, qemu, virtualbox, and vm to check for evidence that the script might be executing within an analysis environment. ^[7]^[8]
ROKRAT	ROKRAT checks for sandboxing libraries.^[16]^[17]
Smoke Loader	Smoke Loader scans processes to perform anti-VM checks. ^[14]
SynAck	SynAck checks its directory location in an attempt to avoid launching in a sandbox.^[18]^[19]
UBoatRAT	UBoatRAT checks for virtualization software such as VMWare, VirtualBox, or QEmu on the compromised machine.^[13]
yty	yty has some basic anti-sandbox detection that tries to detect Virtual PC, Sandboxie, and VMware. ^[11]

Mitigations

This type of attack technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on the abuse of system features.

Detection

Virtualization/sandbox related system checks will likely occur in the first steps of an operation but may also occur throughout as an adversary learns the environment. Data and events should not be viewed in isolation, but as part of a chain of behavior that could lead to other activities, such as lateral movement, based on the information obtained. Detecting actions related to virtualization and sandbox identification may be difficult depending on the adversary's implementation and monitoring required. Monitoring for suspicious processes being spawned that gather a variety of system information or perform other forms of Discovery, especially in a short period of time, may aid in detection.

Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion: System Checks

Other sub-techniques of Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion (3)

Procedure Examples

Mitigations

Detection

References