GameGuardnProtect

Hunt Hypothesis

This rule detects the presence of GameGuardnProtect, a known anti-cheat and process protection mechanism often leveraged by adversaries to hide malicious processes or prevent analysis in memory. Proactively hunting for this indicator in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC team to identify potential living-off-the-land techniques or specific malware families that utilize this component to evade standard detection controls.

YARA Rule

rule GameGuardnProtect
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { 31 FF 74 06 61 E9 4A 4D 50 30 5A BA 7D 00 00 00 80 7C 24 08 01 E9 00 00 00 00 60 BE [4] 31 FF 74 06 61 E9 4A 4D 50 30 8D BE [4] 31 C9 74 06 61 E9 4A 4D 50 30 B8 7D 00 00 00 39 C2 B8 4C 00 00 00 F7 D0 75 3F 64 A1 30 00 00 00 85 C0 78 23 8B 40 0C 8B 40 0C C7 40 20 00 10 00 00 64 A1 18 00 00 00 8B 40 30 0F B6 40 02 85 C0 75 16 E9 12 00 00 00 31 C0 64 A0 20 00 00 00 85 C0 75 05 E9 01 00 00 00 61 57 83 CD FF EB 0B 90 8A 06 46 88 07 47 01 DB 75 07 8B 1E 83 EE FC 11 DB 72 ED B8 01 00 00 00 01 DB 75 07 }

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 GameGuardian or GG (GameGuardian) tool on a developer’s workstation to test memory editing features for a new game build, or a QA engineer uses it during a penetration test to verify anti-cheat bypasses.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude hosts where the user account belongs to the GameDev or QA-Testing AD group, or exclude file paths containing \Projects\ or \Builds\ in the directory tree.
• Scenario: A corporate software deployment tool (e.g., SCCM or Intune) pushes a legacy game client or a specific SDK that includes the GameGuardnProtect DLL as part of a bundled dependency for a niche internal application, causing the YARA rule to match the static binary during a full disk scan.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude files located in standard application installation directories like C:\Program Files (x86)\ or C:\Program Files\ if the parent application is on the approved software whitelist (e.g., InternalGameClient.exe).
• Scenario: A backup or archival job (e.g., Veeam or Commvault) restores or scans a snapshot of a user’s profile that contains a previously downloaded game executable or modding tool, triggering the YARA rule during the backup verification or integrity check process.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude events where the process name is a known backup agent (e.g., vssadmin.exe, commvaultagent.exe, veeamagent.exe) or where the file path contains \Backup\, \Archive\, or \Snapshots\.
• Scenario: A developer uses a portable version of a game engine or a modding framework (like Sage or GG variants) stored in a temporary directory (`