LTC v13 additional

Hunt Hypothesis

This hypothesis targets the presence of the “LTC v13” malware variant, which is often associated with advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns that deploy custom loaders or backdoors to maintain footholds in enterprise environments. Proactively hunting for this specific YARA signature in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC to identify compromised endpoints or storage artifacts before the adversary can escalate privileges or exfiltrate data, mitigating the risk of low-severity detections evolving into high-impact breaches.

YARA Rule

rule LTC_v13_additional: PEiD
{
    strings:
        $a = { 60 EB 03 C7 84 E8 EB 03 C7 84 9A E8 00 00 00 00 5D 81 ED 10 00 00 00 EB 03 C7 84 E9 64 A0 23 00 00 00 EB }
    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

• Scenario: A legacy Java-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application (e.g., SAP NetWeaver or Oracle EBS) running on Windows Server uses embedded JREs that include specific native libraries or helper executables matching the LTC_v13_additional signature.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the parent process is java.exe or jre.exe and the file path contains \jre\bin\ or \jre\lib\.
• Scenario: The Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) client agent performs a routine software inventory scan or application deployment, temporarily spawning helper executables (e.g., ccmsetup.exe or wsussetup.exe) that reside in standard system directories and may match the YARA rule’s file header or string conditions.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes with names ccmsetup.exe, wsussetup.exe, or ccmexec.exe when the parent process is ccmexec.exe or svchost.exe (specifically the wua or ccm service host).
• Scenario: A third-party endpoint management tool like Ivanti (formerly LAN Desk) or ManageEngine Desktop Central runs scheduled maintenance tasks that execute agent.exe or service.exe from vendor-specific directories (e.g., C:\Program Files (x86)\Ivanti\Agent\), which may contain static strings or binary structures triggering the rule.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude file paths starting with C:\Program Files (x86)\Ivanti\ or C:\Program Files\ManageEngine\ where the process name is agent.exe, service.exe, or desktopagent.exe.
• Scenario: A developer team uses a local CI/CD agent (e.g