DotFixNiceProtectvna

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies the presence of the DotFixNiceProtectvna malware signature on endpoints, indicating potential initial compromise or lateral movement by an adversary utilizing this specific tool. Proactive hunting for this indicator in Azure Sentinel is essential to uncover early-stage threats that may evade standard high-severity alerts and prevent undetected persistence within the environment.

YARA Rule

rule DotFixNiceProtectvna
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { 60 E8 55 00 00 00 8D BD 00 10 40 00 68 [3] 00 03 3C 24 8B F7 90 68 31 10 40 00 9B DB E3 55 DB 04 24 8B C7 DB 44 24 04 DE C1 DB 1C 24 8B 1C 24 66 AD 51 DB 04 24 90 90 DA 8D 77 10 40 00 DB 1C 24 D1 E1 29 }

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 4 specific false positive scenarios for the DotFixNiceProtectvna detection rule, including recommended filters and exclusions tailored for an enterprise environment:

• Scenario: Scheduled Antivirus Definition Updates via Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)

  • Context: During nightly maintenance windows, SCCM triggers a silent update of the DotFix Nice Protect agent definitions. The YARA rule may flag the NiceProtectUpdate.exe process spawning child processes or writing to specific protected directories as suspicious activity resembling the malware’s behavior.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Add an exclusion for the executable path C:\Program Files\DotFix\NiceProtect\bin\NiceProtectUpdate.exe. Configure the detection logic to ignore alerts where the parent process is ccmexec.exe (SCCM agent) and the event timestamp falls within the defined maintenance window (e.g., 02:00–04:00 local time).

• Scenario: Automated Patch Deployment by Ivanti Neurons

  • Context: The enterprise utilizes Ivanti for patch management. When deploying a security hotfix to the “NiceProtect” application, the deployment engine (IvantiAgent.exe) executes scripts that modify registry keys and inject DLLs into the DotFix service memory space. This triggers the rule’s heuristic checks for unauthorized code injection or file modification.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create a whitelist entry for the process IvantiAgent.exe. Apply a condition to suppress alerts where the “User Account” is SYSTEM and the “Source IP” belongs to the internal patch management server subnet (e.g., 10.20.5.0/24).

• Scenario: Backup Operations by Veeam Backup & Replication

  • Context: The DotFix Nice Protect agent includes a local database and log files that are critical