March Detection & Intelligence Highlights: DLL Injection, Evasion Detection & Phishing Automation

VMRay Labs continuously monitors emerging malware behaviors and evolving evasion techniques. Each month, the detection team releases new threat identifiers (VTIs), YARA rules, and config extractors designed to catch increasingly sophisticated attacks. This guide covers the latest detection capabilities released, including advanced DLL injection monitoring, sandbox evasion detection, and enhanced phishing analysis. We'll also explore how VMRay integrates with Microsoft Defender for Office to automatically analyze suspicious emails and feed intelligence back to your security infrastructure.

The goal: Transform user-reported phishing emails and suspicious samples into actionable intelligence, automatically blocking threats before they cause harm.

Launching the Threat Hunting & Detection Engineering User Group

Before diving into technical detections, VMRay announced a new community initiative: the Threat Hunting and Detection Engineering User Group. This is an exclusive, invite-only community designed specifically for VMRay customers—SOC analysts, detection engineers, and threat hunters who want to share practical, real-world approaches to improving detection capabilities and maturing SOC operations.

What Makes This Different: This isn't a product update session, support channel, or threat intel sharing forum. Instead, it's a peer-driven discussion community where practitioners openly share detection strategies, behavioral analysis approaches, investigation efficiency techniques, and lessons learned from the field.

Topics Covered:

• Detection engineering strategies (building better detections)

• Behavioral malware analysis (understanding true threat behavior)

• Improving investigation efficiency (faster threat response)

• AI and LLM applications in security workflows (emerging tools)

Format & Governance: Quarterly sessions starting in April with moderated discussions and occasional guest experts. To encourage open conversation, the group follows Chattam House rules: no recording, no sharing of sensitive details outside the group, and discussions remain private. VMRay facilitates and guides, but the community leads.

How to Join: If you're a VMRay customer interested in joining, reach out to your VMRay representative or contact the VMRay team directly after reviewing this webinar.

New VTI Detections: Advanced Evasion Techniques

Each month, VMRay's labs discover new malware behaviors designed to evade detection. Rather than just flagging known malware, the VTI (VMRay Threat Identifier) system turns evasion techniques against attackers by detecting the suspicious behaviors themselves.

Detection 1: DLL Injection Process Injection

DLL injection is a classic malware technique for hiding malicious code within trusted processes. An attacker loads a malicious DLL into a legitimate application, making it appear that the trusted program is responsible for the malicious activity. This is difficult for traditional defenses to detect because network activity and file operations appear to come from a legitimate, trusted binary.

VMRay now detects this specific process injection technique. When a DLL is injected into a legitimate process and executes malicious code, our monitoring catches the injection event, not just the resulting behavior. This is a behavioral signature of malware, regardless of which trusted process is abused.

Detection 2: Sync AppPublisher PowerShell Abuse

Attackers continue to abuse legitimate Windows components for code execution. The Sync AppPublisher service (normally used to synchronize virtualized applications) has been abused in ClickFix campaigns to launch PowerShell. This is suspicious because Sync AppPublisher has no legitimate reason to launch PowerShell. When this behavior occurs, it's a strong indicator of compromise.

VMRay now monitors for this specific abuse pattern: Sync AppPublisher → PowerShell execution. Detection is behavior-driven, not signature-driven, making it effective against variants.

Detection 3: WMI System Uptime Queries (Sandbox Detection)

Malware authors know that sandboxes are temporary analysis environments. They often check system uptime using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to detect sandboxes—if the system has been running for only a few minutes, it's likely a freshly-booted VM used for analysis, not a real user system.

VMRay detects when applications abnormally query system uptime. Normal applications don't care how long a system has been running. Malware caring about this metric is a strong behavioral indicator of evasion attempts.

Phishing Detection & Config Extraction Updates

Phishing remains the top attack vector. VMRay's detection team constantly adds new capabilities to catch evolving phishing campaigns and underlying malware used in fishing attacks.

Phishing Kit Analysis: Many phishing attacks use phishing kits—pre-built infrastructure that attackers (including non-technical ones) can deploy to harvest credentials. Phishing kits often use Telegram as the exfiltration channel. VMRay now includes config extractors for Telegram-based phishing kits, identifying the exact Telegram channel where stolen credentials are sent. This intelligence enables:

• Victim Identification: Know which channel the attacker is monitoring for stolen credentials

• Campaign Attribution: Link multiple phishing campaigns to the same attacker infrastructure

• Takedown Support: Provide Telegram and law enforcement with evidence of malicious channels

New Stealer Support: Santa stealer (a December 2024 addition, likely an evolution of blue line stealer) now has config extraction support. When a Santa stealer sample is analyzed, its configuration is automatically extracted and included in the report.

Phishing Redirection Detection: Studies show approximately 20% of phishing campaigns use phishing redirects—intermediate pages that check if you're a real victim before redirecting to the actual phishing page. VMRay detects these redirect chains, following the attacker's logic to the final phishing destination.

IAL Attachment Analysis: Some phishing campaigns include suspicious IAL (iCalendar) attachments. Even after deletion, these can remain in calendars and are difficult for users to remove. VMRay's improved Auto-UI now handles IAL attachments as part of phishing analysis.

Automated User Interaction: ClickFix & Fake Windows Updates

Auto-UI (Automated User Interaction) allows VMRay to interact with phishing pages and malicious documents as a human would—clicking links, filling forms, interacting with UI elements. This mimics genuine user behavior, allowing attackers' infrastructure to execute.

ClickFix Evolution: ClickFix attacks have evolved from simple "prove you're human" challenges to increasingly sophisticated fake Windows update/error dialogs. The user is prompted to copy a command and run it in PowerShell. Variants now include buttons instead of copy-paste, making the attack more accessible to non-technical victims.

VMRay's Auto-UI has been updated to handle these new ClickFix variants:

• Detect fake Windows update dialogs (visual patterns, common themes)

• Click buttons when presented (newer ClickFix variants)

• Handle command copy operations (for traditional ClickFix)

• Execute PowerShell commands and monitor payload download

This allows VMRay to fully detonate ClickFix campaigns in an automated manner, revealing the final payload without requiring manual analyst intervention.

Microsoft Defender for Office Integration Architecture

VMRay integrates with Microsoft Defender for Office (MDO) to automatically analyze phishing emails and enhance defender's threat triage capabilities. The integration focuses on user-reported phishing emails—the ones that bypass initial security layers and reach users.

Why User-Reported Phishing Matters: User-reported phishing represents a gap in automated defenses. A SANS report shows 12-35% of reported emails contain genuine threats. Additionally, phishing kits evolve constantly—new variants may not be known to reputation databases. The Flare-On report on phishing kit economics reveals:

• Advanced threat actors develop new phishing techniques (reverse proxy, MFA bypass)

• Phishing-as-a-Service lowers the barrier to entry for attackers

• Attackers continuously iterate to bypass existing defenses

• User-reported phishing often contains the newest, most evasive campaigns

Integration Flow: When a user reports a phishing email in Defender:

1. Azure connector detects the alert via API

2. URLs and attachments are extracted from the email

3. Samples are submitted to VMRay for analysis

4. VMRay analyzes files, detonates URLs, monitors behavior

5. Analysis results are pushed back to Defender as IOCs

6. Malicious URLs/files are automatically added to Defender's block list

Privacy & Data Handling: The Azure connector is the middleman. From VMRay's perspective, we only receive isolated files and URLs for analysis. No email headers, no user data, no sensitive context beyond the suspicious sample itself.

Real-World Demo: Phishing Investigation Workflow

Let's walk through a real example of user-reported phishing analysis with Defender integration.

Scenario 1: Malicious URL with Net Support Download

A user reports an email containing a suspicious link. Defender flags it as "Low Priority" with limited information. When integrated with VMRay:

• URL is automatically detonated by VMRay

• A batch file is discovered (clipboard content manipulation)

• Batch file executes Net Support (remote management tool abused as RAT)

• VMRay detects the malicious behavior and flags Net Support installation

• IOCs are extracted: malicious URL, C2 server IP, batch file hash

• IOCs are automatically added to Defender's block list

Key Insight: The batch file may be zero-day (not in VirusTotal) when first discovered. By analyzing it dynamically, VMRay identifies it as malicious before public signature databases catch it. Immediate blocking prevents infection across the organization.

Scenario 2: Phishing PDF with QR Code

An attacker sends a PDF containing a QR code linking to a malicious URL. Static URL analysis might miss this. With VMRay:

• PDF is submitted for analysis

• QR code is extracted and decoded

• Embedded URL is detonated

• URL downloads an infostealer (VA stealer)

• Stealer configuration is extracted (C2 servers, targets)

• Process tree shows injection techniques and evasion attempts

Scenario 3: Excel Attachment with Embedded URL

Attacker sends Excel file via email. Excel contains a URL that downloads Remcos RAT. Analysis flow:

• Excel file submitted to VMRay

• Embedded URL extracted (URL is child sample)

• URL detonated, downloads Remcos executable

• Remcos configuration extracted (C2 servers, campaign identifiers)

• Process tree and MITRE ATT&CK mapping provided

• Analysis completes in ~2 minutes with extensive behavioral data

IOC Extraction & Automated Blocking

Analysis without actionable outcomes is incomplete. VMRay extracts Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from every analysis and automatically pushes them to Defender.

IOC Types Extracted:

• URLs: Phishing pages, malware download links, C2 servers

• File Hashes: MD5, SHA-256 of malware binaries

• IP Addresses: C2 server IPs, attacker infrastructure

• Domain Names: Malicious domains hosting payloads or phishing pages

Automatic Blocking: IOCs extracted from analysis are automatically pushed to Defender for blocking. This means:

• If a batch file is found malicious on user 1's machine, it's automatically blocked for users 2-100

• If a URL is identified as malicious, it's blocked across the organization within minutes

• Zero-day payloads are blocked automatically without waiting for signature databases

Real Example: A batch file analyzed in the morning is found to be zero-day (1 detection on VirusTotal out of 61 vendors). VMRay immediately blocks it in Defender. By afternoon, if this batch file is part of another attack, it's already blocked—before public signatures catch it.

Malware Behavior Analysis & Configuration Extraction

Beyond simple detection, VMRay provides comprehensive malware intelligence through behavioral analysis and configuration extraction.

Behavioral Analysis Examples:

Example 1: DNS Modification for AV Evasion A malware sample modifies DNS resolution to block access to security product domains (VirusTotal, Avast, Windows Defender). This evasion technique is automatically detected and flagged. The specific domains targeted reveal which security products the malware author is trying to evade.

Example 2: Windows Defender Configuration Tampering The same malware disables Windows Defender features (real-time monitoring, script scanning) and adds itself to exclusions. These configuration changes are observed and logged in the analysis report.

Example 3: Process Injection & Memory Modification Malware uses multiple injection techniques—direct injection, reflective DLL injection, API hooking. Each technique modifies process memory or control flow. VMRay detects and catalogs all of these at the behavioral level.

Configuration Extraction: Many malware families have embedded configurations specifying:

• C2 Servers: Where to send stolen data

• Encryption Keys: How data is encrypted during transmission

• Campaign Identifiers: Which campaign/target this payload belongs to

• Feature Flags: Which malware capabilities are enabled

Extracting these configurations provides intelligence that traditional sandboxing doesn't. Knowing the exact C2 server allows for targeted network telemetry, DNS sinkholing, and threat intelligence correlation.

Frequently Asked Questions