ExeShield36wwwexeshieldcom

Hunt Hypothesis

This rule detects the presence of ExeShield, a commercial executable protection tool often used by threat actors to obfuscate malware payloads and evade static analysis. Proactively hunting for this indicator helps identify potentially compromised hosts where adversaries may be leveraging code protection to hide malicious binaries from standard endpoint detections.

YARA Rule

rule ExeShield36wwwexeshieldcom
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { B8 [3] 00 50 64 FF 35 00 00 00 00 64 89 25 00 00 00 00 33 C0 89 08 50 45 43 6F 6D 70 61 63 74 32 00 CE 1E 42 AF F8 D6 CC E9 FB C8 4F 1B 22 7C B4 C8 0D BD 71 A9 C8 1F 5F B1 29 8F 11 73 8F 00 D1 88 87 A9 3F 4D 00 6C 3C BF C0 80 F7 AD 35 23 EB 84 82 6F }

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: An IT administrator manually installs or updates the ExeShield365 endpoint protection agent on a new workstation or server via the installer executable (ExeShield365Setup.exe or similar). The YARA rule matches the binary signature of the installer or the main service executable during the initial deployment phase.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files located in the standard ExeShield365 installation directory (e.g., C:\Program Files\ExeShield365\) or exclude processes where the parent process is msiexec.exe or setup.exe and the file name matches *ExeShield*Setup*.exe.
• Scenario: A scheduled task or service startup triggers the ExeShield365 main service executable (ExeShieldService.exe or ExeShieldAgent.exe) during a system reboot or periodic policy refresh. The YARA rule detects the running process or the loaded module in memory.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the image path is C:\Program Files\ExeShield365\ExeShieldService.exe (or equivalent service binary path) and the process name matches ExeShield*.exe. Additionally, exclude if the process is started by services.exe or svchost.exe.
• Scenario: A software distribution tool (such as SCCM, Intune, or PDQ Deploy) pushes an update to the ExeShield365 agent across the fleet. The update process temporarily loads the new version of the executable into memory or writes it to disk, triggering the YARA match on the file or process.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude events where the parent process is a known deployment agent (e.g., ccmexec.exe for SCCM, IntuneAgent.exe, or PDQDeploy.exe) and the