We’ve made a short video demo to showcase the new THOR 10 feature called “THOR Remote”, which allows you to perform compromise assessment scans on multiple remote systems – no agent or scripting required.
This module checks registered Events in the system environment as they are used by advanced malware and rootkits.
We have checked for malicious Events before, in the Rootkit module, but these checks were hardcoded. We’ve spun out that section and can now provide regular updates in a separate signature file.
The “Events” module extends our set of rootkit related modules that already include the “Mutex” and “Named Pipe” modules.
THOR v10.2 features an unencrypted table in THOR DB that shows timing information for the scanned elements. This could help you identifying elements that lengthen scans significantly and determine a time range in which certain elements have been scanned.
A new switch “–reduced” allows to limit events to “Warning” and “Alert” types only.
Other Changes
THOR v10.1 features a mode of operation that is especially helpful in incident response or compromise assessment scenarios – remote scanning.
Imagine that you’re in a firefighting scenario – a breach has been confirmed and management wants to have quick results on the extent of the compromise.
The new remote scanning feature called “THOR Remote” allows you to perform triage scans on hundreds of remote systems from a single admin workstation. You can think of it as an integrated PsExec.
No scripting, no agents, no hustle.
Benefits
Requirements
All you need is the new version 10.1 of THOR and a command line of an admin user with the required privileges and open Windows ports (135/tcp, 445/tcp) on the remote systems.
THOR will then switch into a new mode of operation and present a command line interface showing scan information and a scrollable pane for each log file. (see screenshot)
THOR writes the log files to a local folder on the admin workstation or sends them via SYSLOG to your SIEM system.
You can also define a number of concurrent scans (workers) and delay the scan starts to distribute the load evenly among the target systems. This is beneficial when you scan numerous virtual machines running on a few host systems.
A complete triage scan of your internal domain can’t be more comfortable.
THOR 10 Fusion has arrived.
It replaces our successful scanners THOR 8 and SPARK and combines the best of both worlds. It is a completely new code base that features all modules of our 4 year old compromise assessment flagship THOR 8 and the speed and extra features of our triage scanner SPARK.
You can find an overview of the major changes in this article.
All customers with an active contract (rental license) and license pack users can download THOR 10 from the “downloads” section in the customer portal.
You can find the new manual as PDF in that section and the ‘./docs’ folder of the downloaded program package.
Please note that signatures updates will be much more frequent due to the decoupling of program and signature files. Make sure to use thor-util version 1.8 or higher.
We plan to release new signature packs every 1-3 days and new program binaries about once a month.
The old scanners will receive updates until mid-2019. However, these updates will be less frequent.
After upgrading to ASGARD version 1.10 you’ll immediately see the new scanner in all menus.
THOR 10 will be the new default for newly scheduled scan jobs. Old scan jobs will not be touched.
Updates of program binaries and signatures can now be managed separately from the “Updates” section.
All the old command line options stayed the same as in THOR 8. However, we’d like to bring some addition features and changes to your attention.
See the already mentioned article for more changes.
Check our license packs for many DFIR and SOC scenarios or request a trial of our new scanner.
If you have any questions, please contact via the support link in the customer portal.
In anticipation of our new scanner THOR 10 Fusion, we would like to show you some of the exciting new features and upcoming changes.
We’ve reviewed and reworked all scan modes in order to clarify the overview of active modules and features for the user.
In the past, it wasn’t always clear which module and feature has been auto-deactivated and auto-activated during the scan runs.
We’ve dropped the “–fast” mode, which was rarely used intentionally but auto-activated on Workstations.
Most of the modules have been completely rewritten.
Due to higher scan speeds we didn’t have to make many compromises. The “default” scan should take roughly as long as with THOR 8 but is much more intensive.
Modules like the “Rootkit” module have been split up in two different sections, one with important and less dangerous checks and one with less relevant checks that could lead to an Antivirus intervention (e.g. Double Pulsar check).
This refactoring allows us to activate the module in “Soft” scan mode and set e.g. “Double Pulsar” as extra feature for that module, which is activated in “Default”, “Quick” and “Intense” scan mode.
Former versions of THOR have been shipped and upgraded as a complete package.
The new thor-util allows you to upgrade program files and signatures separately.
We’ll try to publish new signature packs as fast as new YARA signatures get published in VALHALLA.
The timestamps in all the different modules have been harmonized to ANSIC standard.
This was an important step to allow the creation of meaningful timelines of the discovered events.
THOR 10 uses so-called scan templates in YAML format, instead of the old config file format.
The parameters in these scan templates reflect 1:1 the command line parameters. With these new scan templates it is easy to define a set of parameters for your scan and ship them as the default scan template.
You can even mix the configurations from multiple scan templates, e.g. define a default template and separate templates with different syslog targets for each branch office.
You can choose from multiple options to influence the output format of the log files and SYSLOG messages sent to remote servers.
We handle log messages internally as objects and can easily render JSON or Key/Value pair outputs.
This greatly simplifies the SIEM integration of all output streams.
The difference scan makes use of the THOR DB and checks only elements on disk that have been created or changed since the last scan start.
This is a new ultra fast scan mode, albeit susceptible to timestomping attacks.
THOR 10 inherits the Sigma scanning feature from SPARK and can now apply Sigma rules to local Eventlog entries (Windows) or log files (Windows, Linux and macOS).
Find more information on the Sigma scanning feature in this older blog post.
Process memory matches now show the matching strings or code sequences found in the memory of scanned processes.
Since our YARA rules are tagged during the integration into VALHALLA, all of them have tags including the MITRE ATT&CK tags, that help your analysts putting matches into context.
THOR 10 integrates seamlessly with ASGARD and shows up as third scanner next to THOR 8 and SPARK.
The “Updates” section will show separate update settings for the scanner’s program components and signatures.
The ASGARD menu to create new THOR 10 hunts contains all command line options dynamically extracted from the current executable.
This way it adapts to all future features and command line options that will be integrated into THOR 10 over time.
These are only some of the changes coming with THOR 10 Fusion.
We are in schedule and excited to release it in July.
We are proud to announce the upcoming release of THOR 10 code named “Fusion”.
It will replace our scanners THOR 8 and SPARK before the end of this year. Both of the current scanners will still receive updates until the end of this year.
THOR 10 “Fusion” combines the advantages of our current scanners, the intensive analysis capabilities of THOR with the unmatched flexibility and speed of SPARK.
It features all modules of THOR 8, including Registry, SHIM Cache, Eventlog, Mutex, WMI, Service and Autoruns analysis.
It runs on all major operating systems – Windows, Linux and macOS.
With THOR 10 “Fusion” you will not have to decide between an intense or fast scan anymore. THOR 10 provides the best of both worlds.
We plan to release THOR 10 in July this year. Follow us on twitter or subscribe to the newsletter for updates.
Customers will get a separate notification with changes and instructions for an upgrade.
We constantly improve the quality of our products and services, add features and create new bundles. Follow ups with our customers showed that not all of these changes reach their attention. They are often surprised and excited to hear about these features, free tools or license bundles. This is a list of the changes that often go unnoticed.
Customers who have bought scanner licenses to scan Servers and Workstations, be it an Enterprise or Host-based license, can use both our scanners THOR and SPARK. If you have bought an Enterprise license for THOR in the past, you are also allowed to download and use this license with SPARK on Linux or macOS endpoints. Download SPARK from the “Downloads” section in the customer portal.
Customers are often surprised to hear that. We have customers that are not allowed to collect logs on endpoints due to legal restrictions but they are able to start executables like our scanner SPARK on endpoints, which is able to apply Sigma rules on local Eventlogs. This way, they can apply detection rules on systems that they do not actively monitor. The blog post – SPARK uses Sigma Rules in Eventlog Scan has more information on that feature.
Enterprise customers with a valid support contract for our scanners are eligible for a free ASGARD Management Center, which is able to control and schedule scans on up to 10.000 end points and an Analysis Cockpit, that allows you to ingest and analyze the logs of up to 50.000 end points in a comfortable manner.
Customers with more than 10.000 licensed endpoints are eligible for additional ASGARD Management Centers and a MASTER ASGARD, which is the central management for multiple ASGARD systems.
See the Video Tutorials page to learn how these systems can help you with you daily management and analysis tasks. If you are interested in these systems and your account status, please contact your account manager.
The customer portal contains a CSV with information on all 9973 YARA rules in our signature set (as of 16.02.2019). This way you can verify if a certain threat group or campaign is covered by our rules or not. You can find that CSV in the “Software Information” section together with binary hashes and an update server status on all our products.
We do not support this coexistence but prepared everything to make it easier for you to install Kibana next to our own interface to analyze the collected log data. The analysis cockpit manual has a chapter that explains how to install Kibana on an Analysis Cockpit. The Analysis Cockpit wraps Kibana and serves access as reverse proxy providing a common authentication. You can manage the service from within the “Settings” section of the Analysis Cockpit.
If you have any feedback, questions on these features, please let us know.
We are glad to announce our new product MASTER ASGARD, a central control for a set of ASGARD systems.
MASTER ASGARD is designed to control multiple instances of ASGARD, which itself supports up to 10,000 endpoint agents. Using MASTER ASGARD you are able to control more than 100,000 end points from a single central location.
This control includes:
Here are some screenshots:
Management of multiple ASGARDs
Evidence Collection
Distributed Scans
MASTER ASGARD will be available for BETA program customers at the end of February and to the full customer base in May 2019.
Our brand new ASGARD 1.7 comes with a shiny new feature: Evidence Collection
The evidence collection feature allows you to collect files or main memory from connected end systems.
The memory and file collection tasks provide a throttling option to reduce the upload speed of the dump files in order to save bandwidth and avoid higher response times of servers or workstations.
The file collection feature allows you to get a single file, the contents of a folder with or without its sub directories. You can set size limits for each file and the whole archive.
The “Evidence Collection” tab lists all active and completed tasks.
A log shows you the details of all the collection tasks.
ASGARD version 1.7.2 has been released today and can be upgraded via the “Updates” section.
Please note that the memory collection on Linux endpoints is integrated but not fully supported.
As previously announced our YARA rule packs and feeds will be available in March/April 2019. We’ve put a lot of effort into a internal system named “Mjolnir” that parses, normalizes, filters, tags and automatically modifies our rule base, which contains more than 9000 YARA rules.
This system will now fill a database of tagged YARA rules – the basis of our new YARA services.
The services will be divided into two categories:
The YARA rule set consist of more than 7000 YARA rules of different categories that are used in our scanners.
Some of our rules use extensions (external variables) that are only usable in our scanner products. These rules, experimental, third party and other classified rules will not be part of the purchasable rule set.
The YARA rule feed is a subscription on our rules. The feed always contains the rules of the last 90 days, which is between 250-400 YARA rules.
The quality of the rules in the rule set are comparable to the rules in our public “signature-base” repository.
Some good examples for the different rule categories are:
The rules are tested against a data set of more than 350 TB of goodware. The goodware file repository consists of Windows OS files, several full Linux distributions and a big collection of commercial and free software.
However, false positives are always possible. We do not recommend any destructive action on a signature match, like delete or blocking.
The main focus of our rules are:
