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Cyber Scarecrow

cyberscarecrow.com

151–160 of 253 posts

Re: Cyber Scarecrow

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also dont have a code signing certificate yet either, they are expensive for windows. When someone is offering you a certificate and the only thing you have to do in order to get it is pay them a significant amount of money, that's a major red flag that it's either a scam or you're being extorted. Or both. In any case you should not pay them and neither should anyone else.

There's a reason it costs money and it's because the CAs have to undergo costly audits. Microsoft publishes a list of trusted CAs: https://ccadb.my.salesforce-sites.com/microsoft/IncludedCACe...

This looks like a random website and not a Microsoft website. How could I trust such list?

Re: Cyber Scarecrow

#152
post #68

Ok, but why isn't this open source? If it only creates some processes that don't do anything, there's nothing to hide, really

this +100 I can't just let some random exe run on my machine with nothing but claims from the author. In my head, I'm also wondering why a botnet wouldn't just want to take over such a machine because they know for sure that it's a scarecrow. But security by obscurity is no way to instill trust here

Claims by an unidentified author(s) replying to comments with a 4-hour old HN account.. How did this make it to the front page other than the catchy name?

Re: Cyber Scarecrow

#153
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason it costs money and it's because the CAs have to undergo costly audits. Microsoft publishes a list of trusted CAs: https://ccadb.my.salesforce-sites.com/microsoft/IncludedCACe...

This looks like a random website and not a Microsoft website. How could I trust such list?

Because it came from this site: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/trusted-root/part...

I used Google to search for "list of microsoft trusted CA".

Re: Cyber Scarecrow

#154
Setting aside the concerns with this specific implementation and thinking more of "the idea" I think the biggest concern is this sort of application causing legitimate software to fail to run[0] and how one would "white-list" an application from seeing these "fake artifacts designed to trick malware."

The problem is "the fake components" would have to be prevented from being detected by legitimate software and the only way I can think to do that would be to execute everything in a sandbox that is capable of: (a) hiding some contained running processes (the fake ones) from the rest of the OS while (b) while allowing the process that "sees the fake stuff" to be seen by everything else "like any old process."

Applying ACLs (and restricting white-listed processes) might work in some cases; might equally just be seen as a permissions problem and result in a nonsensical error (because the developers never imagined someone would change the permissions on an obvious key), or it might be that the "trick" employed is "Adding a Russian Keyboard" which can be very disruptive to the user "if they use more than one input language" or "is one of those places where a program may read from there never expecting to encounter an error."

A lot of this seems like it would require use of containerization -- docker/docker-like -- for Windows apps. I'm familiar with a few offerings here and there, but I've worked with none of them and I run Linux more than Windows these days. So my questions really boil down to:

Where's Windows containerization at? Would it be possible to run an application in a docker or docker-like container with a Windows kernel which can have its environment controlled in a manner that is more transparent to the application running within the container? Is there any other approach which would allow for "non-white-listed applications" to run containerized and "see the Scarecrow artifacts", while allowing the white-listed applications[1] to run outside of the container in a manner that hides some of the processes within the container. Can it do all of that in a manner that would work if the same "check" were repeated immediately after confirming an Elevation dialog[2]? from the white-listed application in a manner that couldn't be defeated by repeating the same "check" after presenting an elevation dialog?

Again, that's assuming "this is a brilliant idea" -- and there's some evidence that as a concept, at least, it would help (ignoring this particular implementation of the idea), but it still suffers from its success, so the extent that it helps/is adopted equates to how long any of these techniques aren't defeated. And just from the sense I get of the complexities required to "implement this in a manner that legitimate won't fail, too", I suspect it will be easier to defeat a tool like this than it will be to protect against its defeat. In other words, the attacker is a healthy young cat chasing a tired old mouse.

[0] Anti-cheat being the most obvious, but those are often indistinguishable from malware. I'd encountered plenty of games/apps in the 90s that refused to run when I ran software to trace aspects of their memory interaction. I had some weird accounting app that somehow figured out when my own code (well, code I mostly borrowed from other implementations) was used for the same purpose.

[1] The assumption being that "a legitimate application which does these kinds of checks" is also likely to refuse to run within a container unless it's impossible to detect the container as reliably as everything else (and vendors are completely tolerant of false positives if the affected customers don't represent enough in terms of profit, or the solution is "don't run that unusual security software when you run ours").

[2] I've seen it enough with Easy Anti-cheat that I just click "Yes" like a drone. There was at least one occasion when it popped up after I had installed some developer tooling but not had a game update come down between launches. Because it was a huge install, it may just have been that the game detectedI have no idea why this happens -- on a few occasions, I had no update applied between loads but had installed other software so it could have been "to fix something that software broke" but it could also have been "to re-evaluate the environment as an administrator because something changed enough on the system to warrant a re-check that it is still compliant with the rules"

Re: Cyber Scarecrow

#159
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works, I can confirm. Majority of malware threat running in a VM as a sign of researcher doing the malware analysis. I am recommending doing this for over 10 years now.

That's where I wonder about a tool like this interfering with legitimate software. For example, I believe the anti-cheat software used by games like Fortnite looks for similar things -- my understanding is that it, too, will refuse to start when it is executing in a VM[0]. As a teenager (90s), I remember several applications/games refusing to start when I'd attached a tracing process to them. They did this to stop ex…

You are right, some games, especially multiplayer ones will refuse to work in the VM to prevent cheating, but this is, of course, the business decision on their side. You can always construct the software in such a way that when it detects something suspicious on the system it ceases to function: some copy protections looked up for change in the network card hardware id as developers presumed it is highly unlikely someone will change network interface, but that stopped to be common, when people started using on-board interfaces that change with every motherboard change.

There is also a difference when using commercial stuff such as vmware instead of qemu or virtualbox as open source is more suitable to be tailored to the specific thing, in this case, cheating.

In the end, this approach works well for slowing done malware as there is less risk for normal software to allow working inside of vm in contrast to malware that should be coded to be extra paranoid in order to avoid as many tar pits as possible.

Re: Cyber Scarecrow

#160
post #67
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the WHOIS privacy service enabled by default on .com domains registered through Namecheap.

Hmm my Namecheap domains keep the location details even with WHOIS privacy enabled. To be fair they are 7+ years old so maybe something has changed in that time?

So you don’t actually know what you’re doing but still feel fit to rip on op for it? “Lol” indeed…
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