huntrule

Suspicious Virtual Machine Detection via WMI Win32_Process Query (via process_creation)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-21
Updated
2026-09-21
AnalysisDetection

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

  14. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects sandbox and virtual machine evasion where a process enumerates running processes through the Win32_Process WMI class while looking for virtualization service binaries such as VboxService.exe or Vmtoolsd.exe. The D3F@ck loader performs this check to abort execution inside analysis environments. Such targeted VM discovery is a strong indicator of evasive malware.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Security Product Enumeration via tasklist
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Antivirus Software Discovery via tasklist and findstr
Suspicious Security Software Discovery via tasklist and findstr (via process_creation)
Suspicious Virtual Machine Detection via WMI Win32_Process Query (via process_creation)
Pivot detection · T1057 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.