ENIGMAProtectorV11SukhovVladimir

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis targets the presence of ENIGMA Protector v11, a commercial packer frequently abused by threat actors to obfuscate malicious payloads and evade static analysis. Proactively hunting for this specific signature in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC to identify potentially compromised workloads or staged binaries that may be leveraging this protection mechanism to hide their true intent.

YARA Rule

rule ENIGMAProtectorV11SukhovVladimir
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { 60 E8 00 00 00 00 5D 83 [2] 81 }

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

• Scenario: A developer or DevOps engineer uses a custom build script to compile a C++ application with the ENIGMA Protector v11.0 (Sukhov Vladimir) to protect proprietary logic or obfuscate the binary for a specific client deliverable. The resulting .exe or .dll is copied to a shared network drive or deployed to a test server, triggering the YARA signature match.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files located in specific development or build directories (e.g., C:\Builds\, D:\Source\, or \\fileserver\dev\) and files with specific extensions (.obj, .lib, .pdb) that are part of the intermediate build process. Alternatively, whitelist the specific user accounts (e.g., dev-team, ci-runner) who have permission to write to these directories.

• Scenario: A legacy internal tool or a third-party utility (e.g., a specific version of a game launcher, a niche PDF converter, or an old installer) was compiled using ENIGMA Protector v11.0 years ago and is stored in a standard application directory like C:\Program Files\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\. When the application is executed or updated, the file is scanned and matches the rule.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files within standard application installation paths (C:\Program Files\, C:\Program Files (x86)\, C:\ProgramData\) if the file’s hash or version number matches a known-good baseline. Create a dynamic exclusion list for known legacy applications that are confirmed to use this protector.

• Scenario: A system administrator performs a manual backup or archival task, copying a protected executable (e.g., a custom service binary) from a production server to a backup share or a local admin workstation for troubleshooting. The file