VProtectorV10Dvcasm

Hunt Hypothesis

This YARA rule detects the presence of VProtect v10, a commercial virtualization-based protection tool often used by adversaries to obfuscate malicious code and evade static analysis. Proactively hunting for this signature in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC to identify potentially hidden or packed payloads that may be executing on endpoints, ensuring that low-severity but high-impact obfuscation techniques are not overlooked in the environment.

YARA Rule

rule VProtectorV10Dvcasm
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { 55 8B EC 6A FF 68 CA 31 41 00 68 06 32 41 00 64 A1 00 00 00 00 50 64 89 25 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 C7 84 00 58 EB 01 E9 83 C0 07 50 }

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: Execution of the vprot or vprot.exe binary by the VProtect (or similar vendor-specific) endpoint protection agent during a scheduled integrity check or policy update.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the executable path matches C:\Program Files\VProtect\bin\vprot.exe (or vendor-specific path) and the parent process is the service host (e.g., svchost.exe or the vendor’s service manager).
• Scenario: A scheduled task or Group Policy Object (GPO) script that invokes the VProtect command-line interface to verify license status or push configuration changes to endpoints.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude events where the command line contains specific administrative flags like /verify, /config, or /license and the parent process is schtasks.exe or powershell.exe running under a known admin account.
• Scenario: Software deployment via SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) or Intune where the VProtect installer or updater is executed during a maintenance window.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the parent process is ccmexec.exe (SCCM) or MsMpEng.exe/IntuneAgent and the working directory is the temporary deployment folder (e.g., C:\Windows\CCM\ or C:\ProgramData\Intune\).
• Scenario: Manual troubleshooting by an IT administrator using the VProtect console or CLI tool to diagnose agent connectivity or force a resync.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes where the parent process is conhost.exe or cmd.exe and the user account belongs to a known IT admin group (e.g., IT_Support, Endpoint_Admins).
• **Scenario