D1NS1GD1N

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies specific file artifacts matching the D1NS1GD1N signature, which may indicate early-stage adversary activity such as a new malware variant or a targeted payload deployment within the environment. Proactively hunting for this pattern in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC team to validate potential low-severity indicators before they escalate into broader incidents, ensuring rapid containment of emerging threats that might otherwise be overlooked by automated alerting alone.

YARA Rule

rule D1NS1GD1N
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { 18 37 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 0A 00 00 00 18 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 [2] 18 37 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 88 00 00 80 38 00 00 80 96 00 00 80 50 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 [2] 18 37 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [2] 18 37 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 B0 F0 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C0 F0 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 06 00 44 00 56 00 43 00 4C 00 41 00 4C 00 0B 00 50 00 41 00 43 00 4B 00 41 00 47 00 45 00 49 00 4E 00 46 00 4F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 }

condition:
		$a0
}

Deployment Notes

This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Custom indicators / advanced hunting
• Email Gateway — Attachment scanning
• File Share Monitoring — Periodic scanning of shared drives
• YARA CLI — Manual threat hunting on endpoints

This rule contains 1 string patterns in its detection logic.

• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the D1NS1GD1N detection rule, including suggested filters and exclusions tailored for an enterprise environment:

• Antivirus Signature Database Updates via Scheduled Tasks

  • Scenario: Enterprise endpoint protection suites (e.g., Microsoft Defender Antivirus or Symantec Endpoint Protection) frequently trigger this YARA rule during their nightly scheduled update cycles. The update service often spawns a temporary process that downloads and unpacks signature definitions, mimicking the behavior of a new deployment or configuration change detected by D1NS1GD1N.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Configure an exclusion based on the process image path for the AV update service (e.g., C:\Program Files\Microsoft Defender\MsMpEng.exe or C:\Program Files\Symantec Endpoint Protection\Smc.exe) and restrict the alert to only trigger if the parent process is not a known system scheduler service (svchost.exe running under LocalSystem).

• Configuration Management Tool Deployment (SCCM/Intune)

  • Scenario: When System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or Microsoft Intune pushes application updates or policy changes to endpoints, the client agent executes scripts that modify system registries and install new components. This activity often matches the D1NS1GD1N signature logic, which looks for specific file creation or registry modification patterns associated with legitimate software installation.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create a whitelist exclusion for processes originating from the Configuration Manager client (ccmsetup.exe or ccmexec.exe). Additionally, filter alerts where the user context is explicitly NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM and the process command line contains keywords like “Deployment” or “PolicyUpdate”.

• Automated Backup and Archiving Jobs

  • Scenario: Scheduled backup solutions such as Veeam Agent