DBPEv233DingBoy

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies potential malicious activity associated with the DBPEv233DingBoy signature, which may indicate an early-stage file-based intrusion or specific malware behavior within the environment. A proactive hunt is recommended to validate false positives and uncover any lateral movement patterns that this low-severity rule might miss during standard automated processing in Azure Sentinel.

YARA Rule

rule DBPEv233DingBoy
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { EB 20 [2] 40 [29] 9C 55 57 56 52 51 53 9C E8 [4] 5D 81 ED [4] 9C 6A 10 73 0B EB 02 C1 51 E8 06 [3] C4 11 73 F7 5B CD 83 C4 04 EB 02 99 EB FF 0C 24 71 }

condition:
		$a0 at pe.entry_point
}

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 5 specific false positive scenarios for the DBPEv233DingBoy detection rule, including suggested filters and exclusions:

• Scenario: Automated Backup Jobs Executing via PowerShell

  • Context: Enterprise backup solutions like Veeam or Rubrik often utilize scheduled tasks that invoke powershell.exe to query database states or manage snapshots. These scripts may load custom modules containing byte sequences matching the “DingBoy” signature, triggering an alert during nightly maintenance windows (e.g., 02:00 AM).
  • Suggested Filter: Exclude alerts where the parent process is vssvc.exe (Volume Shadow Copy Service) or specific backup service executables like Veeam.Backup.Service.exe, and restrict the rule to trigger only outside of defined maintenance windows.

• Scenario: Database Schema Migration Tools

  • Context: DevOps teams using Redgate SQL Compare or Flyway run migration scripts against production databases during change control periods. These tools often deploy temporary DLLs or execute PowerShell commands that instantiate the specific pattern detected by DBPEv233DingBoy while synchronizing schema changes.
  • Suggested Filter: Create an exclusion for processes running under the SYSTEM account within the C:\Program Files\Redgate\* directory, specifically filtering out events where the command line contains keywords like “migrate,” “schema,” or “sync.”

• Scenario: Endpoint Security Agent Updates

  • Context: The organization’s endpoint protection suite (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon or SentinelOne) performs periodic definition updates. During these cycles, the agent may spawn a child process to verify integrity of database connection strings, which inadvertently matches the YARA signature for DingBoy due to shared library dependencies.
  • Suggested Filter: