Procedure examples

Pikabot performs a variety of system checks to determine if it is running in an analysis environment or sandbox, such as checking the number of processors (must be greater than two), and the amount of RAM (must be greater than 2GB).

SynAck checks its directory location in an attempt to avoid launching in a sandbox.

Bumblebee has the ability to search for designated file paths and Registry keys that indicate a virtualized environment from multiple products.

yty has some basic anti-sandbox detection that tries to detect Virtual PC, Sandboxie, and VMware.

Smoke Loader scans processes to perform anti-VM checks.

HeartCrypt will attempt to load non-existent DLLs in attempt to detect sandbox creation of a dummy DLL to prevent the program from crashing.

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.

macOS.OSAMiner can parse the output of the native `system_profiler` tool to determine if the machine is running with 4 cores.

DUSTTRAP decryption relies on the infected machine's `HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\MachineGUID` value.

Snip3 has the ability to detect Windows Sandbox, VMWare, or VirtualBox by querying `Win32_ComputerSystem` to extract the `Manufacturer` string.

GuLoader has the ability to perform anti-VM and anti-sandbox checks using string hashing, the API call EnumWindows, and checking for Qemu guest agent.

WastedLocker checked if UCOMIEnumConnections and IActiveScriptParseProcedure32 Registry keys were detected as part of its anti-analysis technique.

InvisiMole can check for artifacts of VirtualBox, Virtual PC and VMware environment, and terminate itself if they are detected.

WhisperGate can stop its execution when it recognizes the presence of certain monitoring tools.

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.

Raspberry Robin performs a variety of system environment checks to determine if it is running in a virtualized or sandboxed environment, such as querying CPU temperature information and network card MAC address information.

Mispadu can run checks to verify if it is running within a virtualized environments including Hyper-V, VirtualBox or VMWare and will terminate execution if the computer name is “JOHN-PC.”

UBoatRAT checks for virtualization software such as VMWare, VirtualBox, or QEmu on the compromised machine.

Nightdoor embeds code from the public `al-khaser` project, a repository that works to detect virtual machines, sandboxes, and malware analysis environments.

Lucifer can check for specific usernames, computer names, device drivers, DLL's, and virtual devices associated with sandboxed environments and can enter an infinite loop and stop itself if any are detected.

ObliqueRAT can halt execution if it identifies processes belonging to virtual machine software or analysis tools.

GoldMax will check if it is being run in a virtualized environment by comparing the collected MAC address to c8:27:cc:c2:37:5a.

DarkTortilla can search a compromised system's running processes and services to detect Hyper-V, QEMU, Virtual PC, Virtual Box, and VMware, as well as Sandboxie.

ROKRAT can check for VMware-related files and DLLs related to sandboxes.

Exbyte performs various checks to determine if it is running in a sandboxed environment to prevent analysis.

Dyre can detect sandbox analysis environments by inspecting the process list and Registry.

PlugX checks if VMware tools is running in the background by searching for any process named "vmtoolsd".

Lumma Stealer has queried system resources on the victim device to identify if it is executing in a sandbox or virtualized environments, checking usernames, conducting WMI queries for system details, checking for files commonly found in virtualized environments, searching system services, and inspecting process names. Lumma Stealer has checked system GPU configurations for sandbox detection.

DarkGate queries system resources on an infected machine to identify if it is executing in a sandbox or virtualized environment.

SVCReady has the ability to determine if its runtime environment is virtualized.

Ferocious can run anti-sandbox checks using the Microsoft Excel 4.0 function GET.WORKSPACE to determine the OS version, if there is a mouse present, and if the host is capable of playing sounds.

Latrodectus can determine if it is running in a virtualized environment by checking the OS version, checking the number of running processes, ensuring a 64-bit application is running on a 64-bit host, and checking if the host has a valid MAC address.

Saint Bot has run several virtual machine and sandbox checks, including checking if `Sbiedll.dll` is present in a list of loaded modules, comparing the machine name to `HAL9TH` and the user name to `JohnDoe`, and checking the BIOS version for known virtual machine identifiers.

P8RAT can check the compromised host for processes associated with VMware or VirtualBox environments.

Trojan.Karagany can detect commonly used and generic virtualization platforms based primarily on drivers and file paths.

BLUELIGHT can check to see if the infected machine has VM tools running.

Black Basta can check system flags and libraries, process timing, and API's to detect code emulation or sandboxing.

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.

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.

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.

MegaCortex has checked the number of CPUs in the system to avoid being run in a sandbox or emulator.

BlackByte Ransomware checks for files related to known sandboxes.

SodaMaster can check for the presence of the Registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\\Applications\\VMwareHostOpen.exe before proceeding to its main functionality.

Grandoreiro can detect VMWare via its I/O port and Virtual PC via the vpcext instruction.

Shark can stop execution if the screen width of the targeted machine is not over 600 pixels.

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.

XLoader performs timing checks using the Read-Time Stamp Counter (RDTSC) instruction on the victim CPU.

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.

SUNBURST checked the domain name of the compromised host to verify it was running in a real environment.

EvilBunny's dropper has checked the number of processes and the length and strings of its own file name to identify if the malware is in a sandbox environment.