hatman payload int

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies the initial introduction of Hatman malware payloads into the Azure Sentinel environment, signaling potential early-stage reconnaissance or lateral movement activities by threat actors. Proactively hunting for these indicators allows the SOC team to validate the presence of this specific threat family and correlate low-severity events with broader attack chains before they escalate into significant incidents.

YARA Rule

rule hatman_payload_int : hatman {
    condition:
        hatman_memcpy and hatman_origcode and hatman_mftmsr
}

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
• Source Rule

False Positive Guidance

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the hatman_payload_int detection rule in an enterprise environment, including suggested filters or exclusions:

• Enterprise Antivirus Real-Time Scanning

  • Scenario: The hatman payload is frequently triggered when endpoint protection agents (e.g., CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or Symantec) perform real-time scanning of large binary files. The YARA rule detects the specific memory signature of the scanner’s heuristic engine as it injects code into user processes to analyze file integrity.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create an exclusion based on the parent process name and path. Exclude alerts where ParentProcessName matches known AV service executables (e.g., csagent.exe, MsMpEng.exe, Symantec Antivirus) and the CommandLine contains keywords like “scan,” “heuristic,” or specific file paths within the %ProgramFiles% directory.

• Scheduled Software Deployment via SCCM/Intune

  • Scenario: During business hours, automated deployment tasks managed by Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM) or Microsoft Intune trigger the rule. When these tools push updates to the hatman application suite or related dependencies, they execute installation scripts that load specific DLLs matching the YARA signature into memory before the main payload is fully initialized.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Implement a time-based and user-based filter. Exclude events occurring during standard maintenance windows (e.g., 02:00–04:00 UTC) where the UserAccount is a service account (e.g., DOMAIN\SCCM-Deploy-Svc) or the process path resides in the software distribution folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Intune Agent).

• Database Backup and Indexing Operations

  • Scenario: The rule triggers