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

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1057Process Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
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

Related detections9 linkedT1057 — drag to rearrange

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Windows: Recon command output piped to findstr.exe

Windows Process Execution of PCHunter (PCHunter64.exe or PCHunter32.exe)

Windows PowerShell: Suspicious Process Discovery Using Get-Process

Windows WMIC Process Flag Execution Indicating Process Reconnaissance

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.

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