Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
WannaCry's 'Kill Switch' May Have Been a Sandbox-Evasion Tool
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
root1657
50%
50%
root1657,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/28/2017 | 10:45:04 PM
Re: I don't believe it was anti-sandbox either... it was a self-safety
I'm not sure that it tells us about thier relative sophistication, because we dont have any of their other work to compare it to. I'm also not sure that attrbution of source or skill is a critical factor here. 

As I see this, the area where it is useful is in realizing that if they used some kind of safe switch so it couldnt attack it's creators in the lab, then perhaps the same could be used in our environments to help the defense as well. It would be a trivial matter for any organization to make the noted DNS entry properly resolve to a sinkhole in house, which would be enough to trigger the safey on this malware, and protect the organization, regardless of what happenes with the real DNS entry out in the world (which has been attacked by some jerks that want to bring it down).

Maybe it's useful in these attacks to look for signs and indicators of built in lab safety that may have been in the code and left in, so we can replicate the safeties at the same time we fight the malicious code.
Kelly Jackson Higgins
50%
50%
Kelly Jackson Higgins,
 User Rank: Strategist
5/23/2017 | 10:35:32 AM
Re: I don't believe it was anti-sandbox either... it was a self-safety
Interesting, root1657. Does that tell you the attackers are more or less sophisticated than if it were an anti-sandbox measure?
root1657
50%
50%
root1657,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/22/2017 | 12:58:42 AM
I don't believe it was anti-sandbox either... it was a self-safety
I've been reading a lot of analysis, and I think the domain check was a method to prevent self infection (on the part of the threat actor). Doing this would be an effective safety on the weapon in your own evil lab, as you could use a few ficticious domains for this safety check, and have them resolve in house. Bombs and rockets usually dont arm until they are away from the laucher, so why should they design malware any differently?


Edge-DRsplash-10-edge-articles
I Smell a RAT! New Cybersecurity Threats for the Crypto Industry
David Trepp, Partner, IT Assurance with accounting and advisory firm BPM LLP,  7/9/2021
News
Attacks on Kaseya Servers Led to Ransomware in Less Than 2 Hours
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  7/7/2021
Commentary
It's in the Game (but It Shouldn't Be)
Tal Memran, Cybersecurity Expert, CYE,  7/9/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
Enterprise Cybersecurity Plans in a Post-Pandemic World
Download the Enterprise Cybersecurity Plans in a Post-Pandemic World report to understand how security leaders are maintaining pace with pandemic-related challenges, and where there is room for improvement.
Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2021-40690
PUBLISHED: 2021-09-19
All versions of Apache Santuario - XML Security for Java prior to 2.2.3 and 2.1.7 are vulnerable to an issue where the "secureValidation" property is not passed correctly when creating a KeyInfo from a KeyInfoReference element. This allows an attacker to abuse an XPath Transform to extract...
CVE-2021-41073
PUBLISHED: 2021-09-19
loop_rw_iter in fs/io_uring.c in the Linux kernel through 5.14.6 allows local users to gain privileges by using IORING_OP_PROVIDE_BUFFERS to trigger a free of a kernel buffer, as demonstrated by using /proc/<pid>/maps for exploitation.
CVE-2021-23441
PUBLISHED: 2021-09-19
All versions of package com.jsoniter:jsoniter are vulnerable to Deserialization of Untrusted Data via malicious JSON strings. This may lead to a Denial of Service, and in certain cases, code execution.
CVE-2021-41393
PUBLISHED: 2021-09-18
Teleport before 4.4.11, 5.x before 5.2.4, 6.x before 6.2.12, and 7.x before 7.1.1 allows forgery of SSH host certificates in some situations.
CVE-2021-41394
PUBLISHED: 2021-09-18
Teleport before 4.4.11, 5.x before 5.2.4, 6.x before 6.2.12, and 7.x before 7.1.1 allows alteration of build artifacts in some situations.