In our recent webinar with Joe Stocker from Patriot Consulting and Matt Soseman from Microsoft, we had the chance to showcase the integration of THOR into Microsoft Defender ATP.
You can register and watch the webinar here.
In the first week of June, we plan to release Master ASGARD v2.
Master ASGARD is an ASGARD version that is able to connect to and control an unlimited number of ASGARD servers.
While each ASGARD supports 25,000 connected endpoints, a Master ASGARD server can control an theoretically unlimited amount of ASGARD servers and thus an unlimited amount of end systems. We plan to support installations with up to 500,000 end systems until we get confirming performance and system load statistics from our customers’ setups.
With Master ASGARD v2 we will also change the way in which you install Master ASGARD.
From now on the ASGARD platform can be upgraded to a Master ASGARD by the installation of special license. You simply upgrade an already installed ASGARD to a Master ASGARD.
Master ASGARD 2 features
Master ASGARD 2 does not support
Please contact sales@nextron-systems.com for more information on Master ASGARD v2.
We are proud to announce the release of THOR Lite. It is a trimmed-down version of THOR v10 with a reduced feature set and the open source signature base used in LOKI and the now obsolete scanner SPARK Core.
It uses the completely rewritten code base of THOR v10 “Fusion” and is therefore faster, more thorough and stable than SPARK.
As you can see in the table below, we’ve come a long way since 2012. We’ve phased out the old THOR version based on Python and SPARK in 2019. Today, we’re replacing the community version of SPARK named SPARK Core with a community version of THOR v10, named THOR Lite.
There are two main differences between THOR Lite and THOR:
Apart from that, you’ll get a fully maintained and tested scanner pre-compiled for the Windows, Linux and macOS platform. A limited support is available via the issues section on the github page for auxiliary scripts.
There is no direct upgrade path from SPARK Core, since SPARK Core and THOR Lite are completely different products and have different upgrade paths.
New users have to subscribe to the newsletter to get download links and a free license. You can subscribe and download THOR Lite using the link on the product page.
SPARK Core users that already have a valid license can use the following download links to download THOR Lite:
THOR Lite for Windows
THOR Lite for Linux
THOR Lite for macOS
Important: These download packages do not include a license. You need to subscribe on the product page to receive a valid license OR use your existing SPARK Core license with THOR Lite.
Please report problems in the issues section of THOR Lite’s helper scripts github page.
We are working on a THOR scanner version that brings our well-known compromise assessments and thousands of YARA rules to IBM’s AIX®.
Subscribe here to get noticed once beta testing and a stable version is available.
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We’ve just released an updated version of our Antivirus Event Analysis cheat sheet. You can download version 1.7.2 here.
The major changes are:
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 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.
We are currently upgrading our update infrastructure in many different ways.
We have added 2 new dedicated update servers – update1 (Karlsruhe, Germany) and update2 (Lenexa, USA). The old update locations will still be supported for a few months but have to be regarded as obsolete.
As a customer, please make sure to allow the following update servers in your proxy / firewall:
In this regard, our old utility called “thor-upgrade.exe” will be out-of-support by the end of July 2018.Please make sure to use the “THOR util” for all update tasks.
Major changes:
It is already part of all download packs.
The new version 1.1.6 of THOR util checks the signatures during the upgrade / download and interrupts the process if an invalid signature is found.
If you have any question, don’t hesitate to contact us via support@nextron-systems.com