Intro
In this post, we’re going to take a look at Volatility 3, the newest version of the industries most popular memory forensics tool (within the open-source community at least).
We have a memory dump from an infected host that we’re going to look at and compare how the newest version of the tool performs as opposed to volatility 2. Let’s get started!
Install Volatility
Firstly we need to install a couple of dependencies, Python3 and Pefile. I’ve installed Python 3.8.6 from here.
When installing Python, make sure you tick the box “Add Python 3.8 to PATH” if you do not want to add the PATH manually.
Follow the default instructions to complete the installation.
Next, we need to install PEFile. I installed PEFile using pip.
pip install pefile
I installed version 2019.4.18 which you can find here.
These are the only two “required” dependencies that volatility requires, so we can now move on to install volatility.
I used git to download volatility, you can download git from here if you do not already have it installed. Once installed, launch Git Bash and run the command
git clone https://github.com/volatilityfoundation/volatility3.gitThe package should be cloned into a folder called volatility 3, which by default will be located in your user folder. So in my case, it’s C:\Users\paul\volatility3
We can now check if volatility has been installed properly by navigating to our volatility3 folder in CMD and running the command.
python vol.py -h
If all has gone right, we should see an output like the following:
This means that we’re now ready to use volatility to analyse our memory dump.
Using Volatility
Anyone who like myself is used to using Volatility 2 will notice that there are immediately some obvious changes with Volatility 3. Firstly, profiles are gone so you no longer have to scan a memory dump to find out which OS profile it’s compatible with. YAY 🙂
The way in which plugins are called in the command line is also slightly different. For example, if we want to run the plugin pslist to display the running processes in a memory image, we would do so by specifying the plugin name windows.pslist.PsList
Let’s give that a try now!
Top Tip: It’s good practice to record the output of volatility into txt files. That way we can easily go back and read through the results instead of having to try and read everything via the command line. I’ve created a new folder called evidence, and the results from each plugin run will be written to txt files in there.
To run the pslist plugin we’re going to run the following command:
C:\Users\paul\volatility3>python vol.py -f C:\Users\paul\Documents\memdump.mem windows.pslist.PsList > C:\Users\paul\Documents\Evidence\pslist.txtLet’s break this command down to understand what it’s doing. Firstly, we’re telling Python to run our volatility script called vol.py. Then we’re using the -f flag to specify the location of our memory dump file. Next, we’re specifying the name of the plugin we want to run, and finally, we’re using the > flag to say that we want the results to be written out to a txt file called pslist which will be written to our evidence folder.
This is the basic command line format that we’re going to need to use for most plugins. Let’s go ahead and run some of the core plugins to gather some basic information. We’re going to run:
- pslist – gives us a list of running processes.
- pstree – gives us the same information as pslist, however, displays the output in a process tree so we can see child and parent process relationships.
- netscan – gives us open network connections.
Processes
If we look at the output from running pslist below, there are a couple of processes that catch my eye, firstly Microsoft Word. As we know, Microsoft Office applications like Word and Excel are commonly used to distribute malware usually by using a malicious macro or embedded file. The Emotet campaign is particularly well known for using these methods.
The other application that catches my eye is fphc.exe. This is not an application that I am familiar with and does not look to be a Windows application. Basically, it looks weird.
PID PPID ImageFileName Offset(V) Threads Handles SessionId Wow64 CreateTime ExitTime File output 1100 720 svchost.exe 0x85854dd362c0 23 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 1140 720 svchost.exe 0x85854ba842c0 2 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 1180 720 svchost.exe 0x85854ba90300 3 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 1188 720 svchost.exe 0x85854f8020c0 2 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 1196 720 svchost.exe 0x85854f805300 3 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 1320 720 svchost.exe 0x858547e3c240 5 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 1376 720 svchost.exe 0x85854faa0240 5 - 0 False 2020-10-15 12:53:55.000000 N/A Disabled 8048 968 UserOOBEBroker 0x85854bd31080 3 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:05:55.000000 N/A Disabled 7328 720 svchost.exe 0x85854f707080 4 - 0 False 2020-10-15 13:12:01.000000 N/A Disabled 5732 968 WinStore.App.e 0x858547ec2080 11 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:12:47.000000 N/A Disabled 4288 968 RuntimeBroker. 0x85854dce9080 1 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:12:47.000000 N/A Disabled 8400 968 dllhost.exe 0x8585506ed080 5 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:12:53.000000 N/A Disabled 4372 968 SystemSettings 0x8585506ea080 19 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:13:17.000000 N/A Disabled 6140 720 svchost.exe 0x85854e9430c0 2 - 0 False 2020-10-15 13:15:14.000000 N/A Disabled 8532 2176 WINWORD.EXE 0x85854b48e080 16 - 1 True 2020-10-15 13:24:51.000000 N/A Disabled 8340 2176 Taskmgr.exe 0x85854b23b080 15 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:26:00.000000 N/A Disabled 7432 5668 fphc.exe 0x85854b659080 4 - 1 True 2020-10-15 13:26:03.000000 N/A Disabled 6880 1884 chrome.exe 0x85854fadb080 11 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:37:20.000000 N/A Disabled 5844 720 svchost.exe 0x858551224080 5 - 0 False 2020-10-15 13:38:02.000000 N/A Disabled 6932 968 smartscreen.ex 0x85854e241080 10 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:38:02.000000 N/A Disabled 7572 6104 wermgr.exe 0x85854e393080 4 - 1 False 2020-10-15 13:38:36.000000 N/A Disabled 5268 2348 audiodg.exe 0x85854c4b1080 8 - 0 False 2020-10-15 13:38:53.000000 N/A Disabled 8348 2176 FTK Imager.exe 0x85854d191080 22 - 1 True 2020-10-15 13:38:55.000000 N/A Disabled 548 720 svchost.exe 0x8585512bb080 6 - 0 False 2020-10-15 13:38:55.000000 N/A Disabled
Running pstree does not give us anything else of interest. WinWord.exe has a parent of explorer.exe which is to be expected. While our other application of interest, fphc.exe has a Parent Process ID (PPID) of 5668. However, there is no application that has this PID in the recorded pslist output. This likely means that our fphc.exe is an orphan process.
C:\Users\paul\volatility3>python vol.py -f C:\Users\paul\Documents\memdump.mem windows.pstree.PsTree > C:\Users\paul\Documents\Evidence\pstree.txtNetwork Connections
Now let’s take a look at network connections by running netscan.
vol.py -f C:\Users\paul\Documents\memdump.mem windows.netscan.NetScan > C:\Users\paul\Documents\Evidence\netscan.txtWe can perform basic OSINT on the IPs returned below using tools like VirusTotal. Many of the IP addresses appear to belong to Microsoft, specifically Azure.
Offset Proto LocalAddr LocalPort ForeignAddr ForeignPort State PID Owner Created 0x858546369010 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51793 52.109.76.78 443 CLOSED - - N/A 0x8585467aa2c0 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 139 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING 4 System 2020-10-15 13:24:48.000000 0x858547334d70 TCPv4 192.168.88.128 139 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING 4 System 2020-10-15 12:53:57.000000 0x8585473a6830 TCPv4 0.0.0.0 49669 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING 2856 spoolsv.exe 2020-10-15 12:53:56.000000 0x8585473a7160 TCPv4 0.0.0.0 49668 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING 2188 svchost.exe 2020-10-15 12:53:56.000000 0x8585473a72b0 TCPv4 0.0.0.0 49668 0.0.0.0 0 LISTENING 2188 svchost.exe 2020-10-15 12:53:56.000000 0x858547e17270 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51894 87.237.22.163 443 CLOSE_WAIT - - N/A 0x85854b936ba0 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51899 52.114.132.91 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854bb56010 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51895 13.107.3.254 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854c16d960 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51891 40.67.251.132 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854c378460 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51901 62.108.35.36 443 SYN_SENT - - N/A 0x85854c3b3010 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51900 185.99.2.123 443 CLOSED - - N/A 0x85854d0cfa40 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51893 13.107.4.254 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854d3b4280 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51831 54.183.140.32 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854d5ac010 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51896 204.79.197.222 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854e3a6050 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51898 84.53.156.184 80 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x85854fef1010 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 7680 192.168.44.1 57428 CLOSED - - N/A 0x8585500ada70 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51886 172.217.20.130 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x8585506e98a0 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51781 40.67.251.132 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A 0x8585508b6230 TCPv4 192.168.44.130 51890 204.79.197.200 443 ESTABLISHED - - N/A
When searching on the Microsft IP addresses, none of them returns any “detection” hits. However, if we look in the “relations” tabs and look at communicating files, we can see many hits on malicious word documents that have called out to some of the IPs we’ve seen. If we draw a threat graph, like the one below, we can see an example of a malicious document that has been associated with the Microsoft IP 52.114.132.91.
It can often be difficult to determine if connections to cloud services like Azure and AWS are malicious or not, due to the fact that IP addresses are shared and reused by different users. It’s a good place for malware authors to hide their attack infrastructure and attempt to blend in with legitimate traffic.
Aside from the Microsoft IP addresses, there were also two other addresses from netscan which are of significant interest.
62.108.35.36
185.99.2.123
Both of these addresses returned detection hits on VirusTotal. Additional OSINT links both of these IP to TrickBot infrastructure. TrickBot is a well-known banking trojan that has been around for several years now. It is commonly distributed via Emotet.
Digging Deeper
We’ve seen a few things now which make us suspect that TrickBot malware has been delivered onto the host via an Emotet. Now we need to try and confirm that this is what has occurred.
Firstly let’s look to see if PowerShell was used by a Macro to download malware as can commonly be the case. We can use the command cmdline to list process command line arguments.
vol.py -f C:\Users\paul\Documents\memdump.mem windows.cmdline.windows.cmdline.CmdLine> C:\Users\paul\Documents\Evidence\cmdline.txt
Unfortunately, there were no interesting PowerShell commands in the results. In Volatility 2, we had the option to use the plugins “cmdscan” and “console” as well as the third-party plugins which try to locate interesting Powershell activity in memory. We’re a little more limited with Volatility 3 as we only have the “cmdline” command.
However, cmdline still did return some useful pieces of informatiuon.
We have the name of the Word Document that was opened by the user:
8532 WINWORD.EXE "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Root\Office16\WINWORD.EXE" /n "C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Detalii-123393.doc\Detalii-123393.doc" /o ""
And we also have the path of the unusal executable that we saw:
7432 fphc.exe "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\fltLib\fphc.exe"
In volatility 2, we were able to use the “dumpfiles” plugin to dump files from memory. However, that seems to no longer be an option in Volatility 3. We can, however, dump a running process by using the pslist command with a dump flag. Using the command below we can dump fphc.exe to analyse.
python vol.py -f C:\Users\paul\Documents\memdump.mem windows.pslist.PsList --pid 7432 --dumpWe still need to obtain the Word Document, but this is going to be difficult without being able to dump individual files. What we could do is dump the WinWord.exe process and try to carve the file out. This is a lot of effort though for what is likely to be commodity malware. So instead we’re going to cheat and just pull the file directory from the host now that we know the path that it’s located in. You could also do OSINT on the filename and try to find a copy on VT or AnyRun to download.
Emotet Analysis
As expected, the document contained a malicious VBS macro, which launches PowerShell with a base64 encoded command. I used CyberChef to decode the text from Base64 and also decoded the text from UTF-16LE (1200). Below we have the obfuscated PowerShell command:
I performed some basic deobfuscation of the code, which I’m not going to go into in this post. I have written how to deobfuscate Emotet Powershell in a previous post here.
Below is a rough deobfuscation of the PowerShell. We can see the script tries to download the file I3d47K.exe into the user’s directory from one of the URLs contained in the site list. A check of the file size of the downloaded file is performed to ensure that the file was properly downloaded, and if it passes that check, the file is then executed.
It’s interesting that we have not seen any sign of the executable I3d47k.exe within any of our Volatility outputs. It’s likely that this executable either drops fphc.exe or is renamed to this.
Executable Analysis
OSINT on our dumped application fphc.exe identifies it as Emotet, as expected. Dynamic analysis on the executable however has shown that it fails to execute properly. We see werfault.exe executed as a result of the application crash. It is possible for malware like TrickBot and Emotet to inject into WerFault. However, when this happens the command line for the process is usually empty, but in our case, we have flags being parsed. Additionally, we’re presented with a crash error, and there is no other typical Emotet activity.
There are a few reasons as to why the malware is not executing properly and the most likely is due to an error when dumping it from memory.
Review of Volatility 3
We’ve been able to build a rough picture of what has occurred on the host, but our analysis is not as complete as I would like. In forensics, you aim to build as clear a picture as possible, and in this case, there are definitely some gaps in our timeline of what’s happened. There was some information missing from our evidence collected with Volatility, but this can often occur in memory forensics as the data we’re dealing with is…..volatile.
The lack of plugins for Vol 3 is something that makes me still favour Vol 2. This will change over time though. As the tool is adopted more widespread, additional plugins will be developed. The Volatility Foundation’s annual plugin competition will from this year be focused on Volatility 3, and with official support for Volatility 2 ending in 2021, it’s only a matter of time before more users move to the newer version and the tool improves.
The two main things that Volatility 3 has going for it is its speed (it’s a huge improvement on Vol 2) and that it is now easier for developers to use the codebase to develop new plugins. The move away from OS profiles is also a welcome addition, as is it’s support for a larger variety of OS versions.
Volatility 3 Plugins
Here’s a list of the different Volatility 3 Plugins for Windows. Don’t forget there are also Mac and Linux plugins too.
windows.bigpools.BigPools,
windows.cmdline.CmdLine,
windows.dlllist.DllList,
windows.driverirp.DriverIrp,
windows.driverscan.DriverScan,
windows.envars.Envars,
windows.filescan.FileScan,
windows.getservicesids.GetServiceSIDs,
windows.getsids.GetSIDs,
windows.handles.Handles,
windows.info.Info,
windows.malfind.Malfind,
windows.memmap.Memmap,
windows.modscan.ModScan,
windows.modules.Modules,
windows.mutantscan.MutantScan,
windows.netscan.NetScan,
windows.poolscanner.PoolScanner,
windows.privileges.Privs,
windows.pslist.PsList,
windows.psscan.PsScan,
windows.pstree.PsTree,
windows.registry.certificates.Certificates,
windows.registry.hivelist.HiveList,
windows.registry.hivescan.HiveScan,
windows.registry.printkey.PrintKey,
windows.registry.userassist.UserAssist,
windows.ssdt.SSDT,
windows.statistics.Statistics,
windows.strings.Strings,
windows.symlinkscan.SymlinkScan,
windows.vadinfo.VadInfo,
windows.verinfo.VerInfo,
windows.virtmap.VirtMap
Extracted IOCs
hxxp://riandutra[.]com/img/YX1/
hxxp://swimsecure[.]com/vsim-henry/r/
hxxp://guarany[.]net/zefiro/ZO
hxxp://losgalpones[.]com/wp-admin/T
hxxp://qualitychildcarepreschool[.]com/0Bq0iCR6gx/oq
hxxp://businessexitnow[.]com/old-wp-includes/1yr/
hxxp://brownshotelgroup[.]com/2r
BFF959FC9504DCF7420C95D0F804334E366A5F54B41CD4C1B3D1FC09256EC459