Multisandbox update to Dr.Web vxCube 1.2 brings Android analysis

The multi-sandbox project is under continual improvement. In June 2018, we announced our integration with Dr.Web vxCube. Today we are happy to announce an update to Dr.Web vxCube that adds support for Android. With more than 2 billion active android devices, having visibility into android is a very welcome feature. Note that this adds to other multi-sandbox Android setups such as Tencent HABO for Android and VirusTotal Droidy.

In their own words:

We are proud to introduce our newest malware analyzer that now supports Android platform - Dr.Web vxCube 1.2. It maintains the same fast and versatile functionality when working with the Android files. Dr.Web vxCube 1.2 conducts a thorough analysis of APK files and provides in-depth reports on their behavior in the sandbox environment, including information about SMS and calls they could try to make. Moreover, each report includes manifest information with a full list of app’s permissions, activities, broadcast receivers and services.

To view the details generated by Dr.Web vxCube make sure to click on the behavior tab:


To demonstrate some of the features, lets take a look at a few malware samples:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/beb7eefb2008aaf28e75d6ec24eb055c57473c4fd91c4ed70c15e352c0c825f8/behavior/Dr.Web%20vxCube

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/a8bf520bcc7336ec447d58794be22715f65ccd0f1c020b5cb7fd6a3599d79e44/behavior/Dr.Web%20vxCube

Detection summary

At the top of the detailed report we can clearly see a detection summary for this APK file. Note that it display a verdict based on execution behavior, this verdict may complement  Doctor Web's antivirus engine running in VirusTotal.

 

Malicious functions

We can see the app is sending SMS spam with malicious URLs:

 

Network activity

The network activity map, visually shows where the traffic goes, along with protocol and address information.

 

Connect the dots

With VT Graph you can see all the relationships above in a single nodes and arcs graph enriched with the historical knowledge of the VirusTotal dataset. Forget about having dozens of open tabs to investigate a single incident, one canvas is all you need.



Moreover, as you can see above, you can easily generate an embeddable graph object in order to display your investigation in sites other than VT Graph.

 

Digging deeper

VT Enterprise users can try some more advanced searches using search modifiers in order to identify interesting samples based on behavioral observations and other structural and in-the-wild metadata.

For example you can search for filenames within the behavior data:
behavior_files:"com.adobe.flash/files/BotPrefix"



Similarly, the behavior-scoped modifiers can be combined with any other facets in order to pinpoint not only malware families but also their command and command-and-control servers, drop-zones, additional infrastructure, etc.

type:apk androguard:"android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" behavior_network:http positives:10+

 

More insights and giving back to Doctor Web and the community

If you are as grateful as we are for this new insights into Android apps, you can give back to Doctor  Web and the community by helping them receive more APKs so that they can continue to improve their defenses. The easiest way to do this is through a community-developed VirusTotal App that will make the task of uploading new APKs to VirusTotal a no-brainer:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.funnycat.virustotal

We look forward to keep working close with Doctor Web, meanwhile we continue to encourage other sandbox setups to join the multisandbox project.

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Multisandbox project welcomes Cyber adAPT ApkRecon

Two weeks ago we announced the release of our new VirusTotal Droidy Android sandbox, a virtual environment that executes Android applications in an automated fashion in order to capture all the actions that the given app performs on the operating system.

Today we are excited to announce that Cyber adAPT is becoming a multisandbox project partner and will be contributing data from its ApkRecon product to the fight against malware. Like Droidy, its solution also focuses on the Android environment. In their own words:

ApkRecon is a sandbox environment developed by the research team at Cyber adAPT.  Amongst many features, the sandbox boasts a baited Android environment, a decrypted network application level capture, and an attack payload triggering system to gain insight into the true intent of each piece of analyzed malware. ApkRecon is also used to generate detection logic for Cyber adAPT’s Mobile Threat Detection product to keep users safe all around the world.

These are some example reports displaying the data contributed by Cyber adAPT:

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/9442fa6e49ffcce01f258b8170cb9ca594fdf7e1f522aa342cc027b642529b88/behavior

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/554fdf5a7062cdba258fceed217cc7e9098923e64339d34d06973453a41805d5/behavior

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/19a0d109d51581a07db2932d5481afdc119cc51dc9f2bac221c6d37fff4d72c5/behavior

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/ee1bd3309054d8c49ada1e78af811999df63d558ed215e211800226de4fa1e25/behavior

It is worth highlighting the usefulness of this kind of data. When facing unknown files for which you have no context it can be very rich contextual information that allows analysts to have an initial judgement of the file before diving into dissecting it. For example, looking at the last example report above we notice that the file performs an HTTP POST to:

hxxp://85.206.166.7/index.php?action=command

This is a URL that we can look up in VirusTotal Graph and jump to the host referenced in the URL, i.e. 85.206.166.7. When exploring this host we notice that only the file under consideration has communicated with it, however, we do notice that expansions are available according to the referrer files relationship. This relationship pinpoints files that contain the given host within its body, even if they have not been seen communicating with it. Let’s follow this notion, something shady seems to be going on:

Badness is much easier to spot when studying the sample characterised in this other report:

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/19a0d109d51581a07db2932d5481afdc119cc51dc9f2bac221c6d37fff4d72c5/behavior

In this case the APK reaches out to the URL:

hxxp://zzwx.ru/apkfff?keyword=BBM

From there we can jump to the domain entity, i.e. zzwx.ru, and expand URLs observed under such domain, as well as files communicating with it. Just two hops and we already have a preliminary idea about the initial APK that reached out to the aforementioned URL being malicious:

These examples highlight the importance of extracting as many attributes and behavioral details as possible from files, not only because they allow us to better understand a particular threat, but because they connect the dots and reveal entire campaigns. For instance, very often blocking a given network location will render ineffective all malware variants of a given campaign (inability to reach the mothership server), so even when certain variants fly under detection radars, there is still hope that network security measures will stop a given attack.

This kind of approach to block badness is something that we have shaped into a particular paper hosted in our www.virustotal.com/learn space, more specifically the paper entitled VirusTotal Intelligence for banking trojans. In this paper malicious network infrastructure is shut down by contacting the pertinent domain registrars and hosting providers, however, organizations can also blacklist these locations in their network security controls.

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VirusTotal += Android execution reports

Last year we included sandbox execution reports for Portable Executable files thanks to the amazing tool developed by Claudio “nex” Guarnieri and his team, Cuckoo. We are excited to announce that as of today we are also displaying behavioural reports for Android applications (APKs).

Indeed, when informing you about Anthony's return from the Android jungle we promised there would be some further new and exciting features to come. While traversing a cascade of APK, ODEX, DEX, AXML and ARSC species he discovered that sometimes Androguard was not enough to distinguish the good from the evil, he needed something more, he needed to record how these species behaved in order to have a clearer picture in mind of their malicious or harmless intentions.

Attending to these needs he developed an in-house Android Sandbox where these fancy creatures could play around, spit their SMS, excreate their files, sing melodic HTTP conversations and perform animal matters.

These are some examples of the reports produced (Behaviour information tab):

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/b707d23bfc22908ae8ee2f6e2d0bc9c74135af18c5eea2b3bcca7471d08985c2/analysis/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/6775a8711283ce4f6f1f000f3bd6d65bb1666c37175efd6b3edc2091842eeeb7/analysis/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/1230d64ccba3f7f5b32972308295ce90ffa7a95cb8f713c7c39ead88e4faff6d/analysis/

Please note that these reports will appear in an asynchronous fashion, they may not be generated until a couple of minutes after your file scan ends.

Those users with private API or allinfo privileges will see this information in the API responses. As to VirusTotal Intelligence, we will soon be indexing this data and the new Androguard outputs in order to enhance our search functionality, stay tuned, pay attention to the pertinent documentation.

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