yodasProtectorV101AshkbizDanehkar

Hunt Hypothesis

This detection identifies potential malicious activity associated with the specific YARA signature “yodasProtectorV101AshkbizDanehkar,” which may indicate a targeted file or process behavior requiring further investigation. The SOC team should proactively hunt for this signal in Azure Sentinel to validate its context and rule out false positives, ensuring that low-severity indicators do not mask early-stage threats within the environment.

YARA Rule

rule yodasProtectorV101AshkbizDanehkar
{
      meta:
		author="malware-lu"
strings:
		$a0 = { 55 8B EC 53 56 57 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? E8 86 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? E8 79 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? E8 A4 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? E8 97 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? E8 2D 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? 60 E8 00 00 00 00 5D 81 ED D5 E4 41 00 8B D5 81 C2 23 E5 41 00 52 E8 01 00 00 00 C3 C3 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? E8 0E 00 00 00 E8 D1 FF FF FF C3 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? 33 C0 64 FF 30 64 89 20 CC C3 E8 03 00 00 00 EB 01 ?? 33 C0 64 FF 30 64 89 20 CC C3 }

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

Here are 4 specific false positive scenarios for the yodasProtectorV101AshkbizDanehkar YARA rule, formatted with specific enterprise contexts and recommended filters:

• Scenario: Scheduled Antivirus Definition Updates

  • Context: The nightly update cycle of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint or Symantec Endpoint Protection often downloads new signature definitions in binary chunks that match the heuristic patterns defined in this YARA rule, triggering alerts during the 02:00–04:00 UTC maintenance window.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Create a time-based exclusion for the process MsMpEng.exe (or Symantec Antivirus Client) between 01:30 and 05:00 UTC, or exclude file paths matching C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Updates\Temp.

• Scenario: Automated Backup Agent Operations

  • Context: The Veeam Backup & Replication agent (vbr.exe) performs incremental backups of database files (e.g., SQL Server .mdf or Oracle datafiles) which contain embedded metadata structures that the rule interprets as suspicious executable behavior.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Exclude processes running under the Veeam Backup Service user account and filter out file paths containing \Backup\Jobs\ or specific file extensions like .vbk and .vbm.

• Scenario: CI/CD Pipeline Artifact Generation

  • Context: During deployment windows, Jenkins or GitHub Actions runners on build servers compile source code and generate intermediate binaries (e.g., .dll, .so) that temporarily reside in staging directories before being packaged, causing the rule to flag these transient artifacts as potential threats.
  • Filter/Exclusion: Define an exclusion for processes