Malware in its many forms — from ransomware, viruses and worms to zero-day exploits and botnets — continues to be a popular attack vector among cybercriminals.

Network firewalls, network intrusion detection and prevention devices and desktop anti-virus software are adept at
recognizing and blocking or quarantining known malware. But by their nature, these security measures can only capture what they know. Can your security solution identify an unknown yet suspicious file as malware, particularly if it’s been engineered to masquerade as a benign file?

Read the new research report from IBM X-Force to become acquainted with the basics of malware sandbox environments and how to overcome evasion techniques malware uses to try to stay undetected.

Download the complete report to learn:

  • The role of malware sandbox environments;
  • What evasive behaviors malware uses to avoid detection in sandbox environments;
  • What sophisticated analysis techniques you can use to out-maneuver advanced malware.

Read the full X-Force research Report: Evading the Malware Sandbox

More from Advanced Threats

Black Hat 2022 Sneak Peek: How to Build a Threat Hunting Program

You may recall my previous blog post about how our X-Force veteran threat hunter Neil Wyler (a.k.a “Grifter”) discovered nation-state attackers exfiltrating unencrypted, personally identifiable information (PII) from a company’s network, unbeknownst to the security team. The post highlighted why threat hunting should be a baseline activity in any environment. Before you can embark on a threat hunting exercise, however, it’s important to understand how to build, implement and mature a repeatable, internal threat hunting program. What are the components…

Top-Ranking Banking Trojan Ramnit Out to Steal Payment Card Data

Shopping online is an increasingly popular endeavor, and it has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic. Online sales during the 2021 holiday season rose nearly 9% to a record $204.5 billion. Mastercard says that shopping jumped 8.5% this year compared to 2020 and 61.4% compared to pre-pandemic levels. Cyber criminals are not missing this trend. The Ramnit Trojan, in particular, is out for a shopping spree that’s designed to take over people’s online accounts and steal their payment card data. IBM…

Detections That Can Help You Identify Ransomware

One of the benefits of being part of a global research-driven incident response firm like X-Force Incidence Response (IR) is that the team has the ability to take a step back and analyze incidents, identifying trends and commonalities that span geographies, industries and affiliations. Leveraging that access and knowledge against the ransomware threat has revealed tools, techniques and procedures that can often be detected through the default Windows event logs (WELs). In particular, the X-Force IR team has identified several…

How to Report Scam Calls and Phishing Attacks

With incidents such as the Colonial Pipeline infection and the Kaseya supply chain attack making so many headlines these days, it can be easy to forget that malicious actors are still preying on individual users. They're not using ransomware to do that so much anymore, though. Not since the rise of big game hunting, anyway. This term marks ransomware actors' shift away from attacks against individual users and towards operations targeting large enterprises, noted CNBC. But attacks like phishing and…