EXE Manager 30

Hunt Hypothesis

This rule identifies the presence of the EXE Manager 30 utility, a tool commonly used by adversaries to create, modify, or extract executable files for payload deployment or persistence. Proactively hunting for this artifact allows the SOC to detect early-stage file manipulation activities that often precede the execution of malicious binaries or the establishment of footholds within the environment.

YARA Rule

rule EXE_Manager_30: PEiD
{
    strings:
        $a = { B4 30 1E 06 CD 21 2E A3 08 00 BF 0A 00 B9 89 0A 33 C0 2E 03 05 47 E2 FA 2E 3B 06 06 00 74 09 B8 07 0E CD 10 33 C0 50 CB BF 0A 00 B9 45 05 2E 8B 16 04 00 FA 33 C0 8E C0 26 FF 36 0C 00 26 FF 36 0E 00 26 C7 06 0C 00 45 01 26 8C 0E 0E 00 2E 89 }
    condition:
        $a 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

• Legitimate Application Deployment via SCCM/Intune: System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or Microsoft Intune often executes EXE files directly from the C:\Windows\CCM or C:\ProgramData\Intune directories during software distribution or patching cycles. These executions may occur under the ccmexec or svchost context but can sometimes appear as direct EXE launches in certain telemetry views.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude executions where the parent process is ccmexec.exe or svchost.exe (specifically the one hosting the Intune/SCCM service) and the image path contains C:\Windows\CCM\ or C:\ProgramData\Intune\.

• Visual Studio Build/Debug Sessions: Developers using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code frequently run compiled EXE files from the bin\Debug or bin\Release directories within their project folders. These are legitimate development artifacts that are executed directly by the IDE or the user for testing purposes.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude executions where the image path matches the regex .*\\(bin|obj)\\(Debug|Release)\\.*\.exe$ and the parent process is devenv.exe (Visual Studio) or code.exe (VS Code).

• Scheduled Maintenance Tasks (e.g., Backup or Cleanup Scripts): Enterprise environments often use schtasks to run maintenance scripts (e.g., disk cleanup, log rotation, or backup agents) that are stored as EXE files in administrative directories like C:\ProgramData\ or C:\Scripts\. These are routine, low-privilege (or high-privilege if required) executions that are expected.

  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude executions where the