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Evade Analysis Environment
Malicious applications may attempt to detect their operating environment prior to fully executing their payloads. These checks are often used to ensure the application is not running within an analysis environment such as a sandbox used for application vetting, security research, or reverse engineering. Adversaries may use many different checks such as physical sensors, location, and system properties to fingerprint emulators and sandbox environments.[1][2][3][4] Adversaries may access android.os.SystemProperties via Java reflection to obtain specific system information.[5] Standard values such as phone number, IMEI, IMSI, device IDs, and device drivers may be checked against default signatures of common sandboxes.[6]
Procedure Examples
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Cerberus |
Cerberus avoids being analyzed by only activating the malware after recording a certain number of steps from the accelerometer.[10] |
| Ginp | |
| Rotexy |
Rotexy checks if it is running in an analysis environment.[7] |
| TrickMo |
TrickMo can detect if it is running on a rooted device or an emulator.[9] |
Mitigations
| Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|
| Application Vetting |
Applications attempting to get |
Detection
Analysis Environment avoidance capabilities can be difficult to detect, and therefore enterprises may be better served focusing on detection at other stages of adversarial behavior.
References
- Vitor Ventura. (2019, April 9). Gustuff banking botnet targets Australia . Retrieved September 3, 2019.
- ThreatFabric. (2019, August). Cerberus - A new banking Trojan from the underworld. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
- Claud Xiao. (2016, February 21). Pirated iOS App Store’s Client Successfully Evaded Apple iOS Code Review. Retrieved December 12, 2016.
- Jeff Stone. (2019, January 18). Sneaky motion-detection feature found on Android malware. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
- Tim Strazzere. (n.d.). Android Anti-Emulator. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
- Chen Yu et al. . (2017, April 13). Android malware anti-emulation techniques. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
- T. Shishkova, L. Pikman. (2018, November 22). The Rotexy mobile Trojan – banker and ransomware. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
- ThreatFabric. (2019, November). Ginp - A malware patchwork borrowing from Anubis. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
- P. Asinovsky. (2020, March 24). TrickBot Pushing a 2FA Bypass App to Bank Customers in Germany. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
- Threat Fabric. (2019, August). Cerberus - A new banking Trojan from the underworld. Retrieved June 26, 2020.