Microsoft Published a List of Legitimate Apps that Hackers Abuse to Bypass Windows Defender

Microsoft published legitimate apps that can be abused by attackers to bypass the security rules and to infects organizations network through living off the land attack methods.

Living off is the method in which attackers use operating system features or legitimate network administration tools to compromise victims’ networks.

“Living off the land” was coined by Matt Graeber & Oddvar Moe, and the primary intention of this project is to understand what binaries were the attacker’s abuse to carry out malicious activities.

LOLBins – Living Off The Land Binaries
LOLScripts – Living Off The Land Scripts
LOLLibs – Living Off The Land Libraries
GTFOBins – Unix Platform Binaries

Hackers use legitimate tools to stay under the radar and to bypass the security measures placed in the organization. By using LotL tools, attackers can operate stealthy, which make analysis challenging to trace malicious activity.

Microsoft recommends you to block the following applications if they are not in user. “These applications or files can be used by an attacker to circumvent application whitelisting policies, including Windows Defender Application Control.”

• addinprocess.exe
• addinprocess32.exe
• addinutil.exe
• bash.exe
• bginfo.exe[1]
• cdb.exe
• csi.exe
• dbghost.exe
• dbgsvc.exe
• dnx.exe
• fsi.exe
• fsiAnyCpu.exe
• kd.exe
• ntkd.exe
• lxssmanager.dll
• msbuild.exe[2]
• mshta.exe
• ntsd.exe
• rcsi.exe
• system.management.automation.dll
• windbg.exe
• wmic.exe

Microsoft provided deny file rules for all the application listed and recommended to update with latest security updates.

Threat actors depend more on abusing the genuine windows system files and achieve their goal in persistence, defense evasion, lateral movement and more.

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